*5»i*V 'I'VFfl'H
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE
 
 PUBLISHED ON THE FOUNDATION 
 ESTABLISHED IN MEMORY OF 
 
 HENRY WELDON BARNES 
 OF THE CLASS OF 1882, YALE COLLEGE.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 AN ESSAY 
 
 FOR ENGLISH-SPEAKING READERS 
 
 OF FRENCH 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES CAMERON CLARKE 
 
 PROFESSOR OF FRENCH 
 SHEFFIELD SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL, YALE UNIVERSITY 
 
 NEW HAVEN • YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 LONDON • HUMPHREY MILFORD • OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 MDCCCCXXII
 
 COPYRIGHT 1922 BY 
 
 YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 

 
 en 
 
 CD 
 
 "PC 
 
 CS5c 
 
 THE HENRY WELDON BARNES MEMORIAL 
 PUBLICATION FUND 
 
 •>4 The present volume is the seventh work published by the Yale 
 
 5^ University Press on the Henry Weldon Barnes Memorial Publica- 
 
 P£ tion Fund. This Foundation was established June 16, 1913, by a 
 
 H gift made to Yale University by the late William Henry Barnes, 
 
 Esq., of Philadelphia, in memory of his son, a member of the 
 
 Class of 1882, Yale College, who died December 3, 1882. While 
 
 a student at Yale, Henry Weldon Barnes was greatly interested 
 
 in the study of literature and in the literary activities of the 
 
 f~~college of his day, contributing articles to some of the under- 
 
 crgraduate papers and serving on the editorial board of the Yale 
 
 t^Record. It had been his hope and expectation that he might in 
 
 naffer life devote himself to literary work. His untimely death 
 
 ^prevented the realization of his hopes ; but by the establishment 
 
 —»f the Henry Weldon Barnes Memorial Publication Fund his 
 
 name will nevertheless be forever associated with the cause of 
 
 scholarship and letters which he planned to serve and which he 
 
 loved so well. 
 
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 2G241 2
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. Introductory 13 
 
 II. Divisions of French Verse 20 
 
 III. tfhree Systems of Versification 24 
 
 IV. French Stress and Rhythm 35 
 
 V. tfhe Basic Rhythm of French Verse 49 
 
 VI. Stress and Variety 65 
 
 VII. Syllable Counting 76 
 
 VIII. Management and Influence of "Mute" E 101 
 
 IX. Masculine and Feminine Rhymes 137 
 
 X. Rhyme Design 151 
 
 XI. Overflow 167 
 
 XII. Vers Libre 180
 
 PREFACE 
 
 The pages which follow form a monograph 
 rather than a book, or even a treatise. They have 
 been made few in number and their contents have 
 been briefly expressed, so that the work may be read 
 consecutively from end to end. It is not intended for 
 use as a book of reference, but as a way leading to 
 an appreciation of French verse. 
 
 The writer does not believe that there is any need, 
 in such an essay, of a formal bibliography. He 
 acknowledges his indebtedness to every author, in 
 French, German, and English, from whom he has 
 been able, during many years of reading, to extract 
 information. Readers who desire to consult standard 
 authorities on the various features of French versi- 
 fication are referred to Essai sur VHistoire du Vers 
 Frangais, by H. P. Thieme, published by Edouard 
 Champion, Paris, 1916, an admirable explanatory 
 guide to the whole subject. 
 
 Historical treatment has been purposely avoided, 
 as being confusing rather than enlightening to per- 
 sons who are not familiar with the development of 
 the French language. The question, therefore, of an 
 historical connection between modern French verse 
 
 . 11 .
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 and a Popular Latin verse of accentual basis, so ably 
 discussed by the late M. Gaston Paris, has been 
 neglected. In the interest of simplicity a practical 
 unanimity of pronunciation is assumed for the edu- 
 cated class to which Malherbe gave the law. This, 
 of course, is a convenient expedient merely, but its 
 inexactness as a fact does not make it less useful as 
 an explanation of certain differences that exist to- 
 day between French prose and French verse. 
 
 12
 
 I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 English-speaking people who can under- 
 stand modern French poetry, that is, the work of 
 the poets from Ronsard to the present day, are not 
 rare; but few of us are able to read it as something 
 living, and to enjoy it through the sense of hearing 
 as well as by the intellect and the critical faculty. 
 In our own poetry, however, we feel beauty, tender- 
 ness, or impressive power through the union of 
 thought and sound. As we read, although we may 
 not read aloud, we hear a music which accompanies 
 and enhances an order of ideas above and beyond 
 those of the natural world. The mere thought, if 
 divested of the versification, is only a study in 
 poetics; it is not the poem, but merely the poem's 
 basis. 
 
 Such separation of sense from sound is inevitable 
 when we try to read the ancient classics, and is 
 commonly practiced when we are interpreting the 
 poetry of most of the nations now inhabiting the 
 European continent. There are, of course, some spe- 
 cialists in classical study who can read the quantita- 
 
 •13-
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 tive verses of, let us say, Theocritus or Horace with 
 satisfactory approximation to the ancient delivery; 
 but Greek, especially, and Latin in large measure, 
 are too far distant from us in time and linguistic 
 development to be generally appreciated in this way. 
 Indeed, the Athenians themselves devoted years and 
 much special training to what they termed "music" 
 in order to produce in their scholars true enunciation 
 and delicacy in the rendering of the Hellenic poets. 
 As for our actual classroom exercise known as scan- 
 ning classic verse, every teacher must know that it 
 is pure falsification, it being a substitution of Eng- 
 lish principles in a system of prosody which was 
 based upon something quite different from our own. 
 
 Now, on the other hand, when we turn to French 
 verse we find something so close to English verse in 
 most respects, that with even moderately intelligent 
 instruction and average practice in pronouncing the 
 language we can hope to learn to make it beautiful 
 to our rhythmic sense. This statement is not intended 
 to imply that we can necessarily make it agreeable 
 to a listener; for very few of us, either English or 
 French in speech, can render poetry effectively, no 
 matter how much we may enjoy the sound, or imagi- 
 nary sound, of our own reading. The art of elocution 
 is very different from the ability to read verse with 
 sensuous pleasure. 
 
 In saying that French versification is, as a system, 
 
 • 14.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 very close to that of our own we do not deny that 
 the best practical way of studying it is to regard it 
 as very different. In fact, this is the only safe view- 
 point at the beginning of our investigation. We 
 shall assume that it is completely unfamiliar and 
 foreign in spirit; for if we were to start with the 
 idea that we could deal with it just as with our 
 own, French versification would seem either defec- 
 tive or hopelessly mysterious. As an example of this 
 mistaken method there may be cited an incident 
 during a recent session of a club of persons interested 
 in the study of modern languages, when a well- 
 known authority in English contended that if the 
 first of these two lines from Verlaine: 
 
 II pleure dans mon coeur 
 
 Comme il pleut dans la ville . . . 
 
 was a good French verse, the second must be defec- 
 tive. A French gentleman of literary attainment 
 combated the assertion, but failed to convince the 
 professor of English because neither party appreci- 
 ated the viewpoint of the other. 
 
 The truth is that French versification is not de- 
 fective or mysterious, but is merely based upon 
 certain principles which are inevitable while the 
 French language is what it is, and pronounced as it 
 has been since it crystallized from the dialects of the 
 Middle Ages. 
 
 .15.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Let us begin then by assuming that the verse in 
 question is as far removed from English verse as 
 Japanese painting is from French. There was a time, 
 almost within our memories, when a Japanese pic- 
 ture was considered an interesting but odd attempt 
 to represent objects without proper attention to 
 what Europeans agree upon as the laws of perspec- 
 tive. As better understanding of Japanese history, 
 religion, tradition, symbolism, and purpose, has 
 come to us from greater familiarity and closer study, 
 we have discovered grace and delicacy where we 
 once saw only disregard of proportion and absence 
 of atmosphere. Without pushing an analogy too 
 far, is it not possible for a majority of the readers of 
 French to acquire a taste for the poetry of the lan- 
 guage, which shall equal at least their fondness for 
 its prose 1 ? 
 
 It must be admitted that at present this taste 
 is not common, and there may be more than one 
 reason for its absence. We hear, for instance, that 
 people do not read poetry in these days; and very 
 probably they do not to the extent that they once 
 did. But in spite of the haste of the age, its posi- 
 tivism, its commercial tinge, and its strife for 
 quickly won riches or distinctions, there are readers 
 of poetry, — "regular" poetry as distinguished from 
 the "new" verse, — in the English-speaking world. 
 Between the class which must think only of its 
 
 . 16.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 material needs, and the other extreme of society, 
 where life is just as destructive of contemplation by 
 reason of competition for luxury and distinguished 
 position, there is a middle body that has, at times at 
 least, the leisure and the inclination to love the 
 poets. In spite of the modern tendency toward town 
 life, millions of us dwell in the country, or in corners 
 of cities, where tranquillity is to be found even if 
 not sought. 
 
 Moreover, from the hard-working members of our 
 lower strata rises continually a generation emerging 
 from poverty, legions who are discovering literature 
 and art, and to whom therefore poetry has a charm 
 that it can hardly exert upon others who, from 
 earliest years having had books presented to their 
 notice in bewildering numbers, have come to view 
 them as part of "human nature's daily food." And 
 in all ranks we have the young, passing rapidly 
 through the epitome of the development of the race 
 from animalism to its present materialism, and 
 stopping for a moment in the stage of all more or 
 less primitive peoples, who love rhythm, romance, 
 and lyric expression. 
 
 It is possible, of course, that many of us are with- 
 out appreciation of the poetry of our mother tongue. 
 For such the difficulty is insurmountable, and these 
 must not expect the miracle of conversion to a love 
 
 .17.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 for poetry in another language. Their disability is 
 inherent. 
 
 But, given a fondness, even to a certain degree 
 cultivated rather than inborn, for English verse, 
 very likely one who has it may find the eighteenth 
 century in France barren of lyrics and lyric senti- 
 ment, with a stilted and self-conscious versified 
 drama. Very likely, too, the great classic theatre of 
 Corneille and Racine seems too far away from our 
 time and our taste to make a sincere appeal, while 
 the poetry of their earlier brethren, such as Charles 
 d'Orleans, and Francois Villon, and Pierre Ronsard, 
 however pleasing in translation, is forbiddingly ar- 
 chaic in language for a reader of the present century. 
 However, all these objections will not account for 
 lack of interest in the work of the Romantic and 
 Parnassian poets, little of which practically ante- 
 dates 1830, and which is vast in amount, full of 
 variety, sincere, lyric, and personal. It contains 
 philosophy, passion, music, color. 
 
 If we are indifferent to most of this poetry and 
 to that which has succeeded it in France, the reason 
 can be only that we have studied it as we used to 
 study what Vergil wrote nearly two thousand years 
 ago, and have not learned to hear it as we must hear 
 Swinburne, Tennyson, Edgar Poe, and Masefield. 
 It will be difficult to give, unaided by the voice, — 
 to give in print, — such an explanation of modern 
 
 . 18.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 French versification as shall help foreign readers to 
 get an approximate idea of its movement and 
 melody; but the attempt ought to be made in re- 
 sponse to the general and marked advance in the 
 interest taken, within the last decade, in living con- 
 tinental languages, and especially for the benefit of 
 English-speaking readers of French. 
 
 19
 
 II. 
 
 DIVISIONS OF FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Division of French versification into periods 
 by more or less arbitrary assumption of dates as 
 boundaries is convenient and even necessary. It is, 
 however, not scientifically justifiable. There has 
 been no radical change, that is, no change of princi- 
 ple, in it since the earliest verses which can be called 
 French rather than Latin. As we are not concerned 
 with the subject historically, let us ignore the evolu- 
 tion of what we find existent, and say that we shall 
 deal with Classic verse, Romantic verse, and with 
 something else, which appeared in the last quarter 
 of the nineteenth century, called Vers Libre. 
 
 By the first of these three kinds of versification, 
 the Classic, is meant the sort that was accepted from 
 the time of Ronsard, in 1550, until about 1820. 
 Malherbe promulgated the rigid code that governed 
 it and Boileau helped to fix its supposedly inalter- 
 able principles. It was this system, not distinct from 
 that which had been followed by French versifiers 
 before the Renaissance, but reduced to rules and 
 prohibitions, which dominated all the poets of the 
 
 • 20.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, including, of 
 course, Corneille, Racine, Moliere, Voltaire, and Le- 
 brun. 
 
 The second division, the Romantic versification 
 of the nineteenth century, is, properly considered, 
 merely a modification of the system just mentioned. 
 Though it is held to have had as its first exponent 
 Andre Chenier, whose life ended during the Revolu- 
 tion, and though Lamartine published his earliest 
 Meditations in 1820, Victor Hugo was its chief 
 apostle. Practically all its peculiarities are exempli- 
 fied in his poetry, from the Orientates, of 1827, to 
 the last part of the Legende des Siecles, which ap- 
 peared in 1883. Alfred de Musset, Leconte de Lisle, 
 Theophile Gautier, Sully-Prudhomme, Theodore de 
 Banville, Frangois Coppee, and Paul Verlaine are 
 representative, each in his own way and with modi- 
 fications, of the changed prosody which accompanied 
 the Romantic movement in French letters. 
 
 In the third place, there has existed in French 
 from about 1880 to the present time a group of 
 versifiers who dare to treat the old Classic system 
 much more disrespectfully than seemed wise to the 
 Romantic poets. The brightest star among them is 
 Henri de Regnier, and their inspiration appears to 
 have been Paul Verlaine. Among their better-known 
 names are Gustave Kahn, Viele-Griffin, Maeter- 
 linck, Verhaeren, Adolphe Rette, and Arthur Rim- 
 
 .21 •
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 baud. The peculiar product of this body of poets, 
 for they should hardly be called a school, is the 
 Vers Libre. In using this term there is danger of 
 causing confusion between a new and anomalous 
 thing and the accepted vers libres of Classic French, 
 that is, the "free verses" employed by Racine, for 
 instance, in the choruses of Esther, and so often by 
 La Fontaine. Those were nothing more than series 
 of lines of varying length with rhymes known as 
 melees or "mixed," whereas the Vers Libre of to- 
 day, or rather yesterday, is not only in contravention 
 of most of Malherbe's rules, but is seemingly with- 
 out what could be called rules of its own. It is gen- 
 erally coupled with the style of writing named 
 Symbolisme, but does not necessarily accompany it. 
 Much of the Symbolist poetry has been cast in purely 
 Classic or Romantic form, although there is evident 
 congruity between the vagueness of the Symbolist 
 thought and the elusiveness of rhythm in a kind of 
 versification which Anatole France says the poet 
 himself "cannot scan, and the cadence of which, I 
 confess, I cannot catch." 
 
 For the present the Vers Libre must be passed 
 over as an interesting experiment, much more inter- 
 esting to foreigners than such innovations usually 
 can be, but worthy of special discussion only after 
 Classic verse is fully understood. Fortunately modern 
 French poetry of undisputed value is without ex- 
 
 . 22 .
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 ception either Classic or Romantic in form, and 
 these two divisions can best be viewed together. In- 
 deed, they can hardly be explained separately, con- 
 sisting as they do of a system and its modification, 
 rather than being two systems. 
 
 23
 
 III. 
 
 THREE SYSTEMS OF VERSIFICATION 
 
 Before we take up French verse our atten- 
 tion must be given briefly to versification in general. 
 Fortunately there is no need to define the term, for 
 nothing is harder to reach than a perfect definition. 
 The point to be made clear is that in the verse of 
 any language we may choose to investigate there is 
 at least one characteristic which is basic and others 
 that are merely accessory. Without the accessories, 
 or deprived of any one of them, the verse in question 
 has lost something, but is still verse. When it loses 
 the basic characteristic it ceases to be verse at all. 
 In English, for one case, can there be verse without 
 rhyme 4 ? Certainly, for some of our greatest poetry is 
 rhymeless. There is often a striking amount of 
 alliteration in it also; but much English verse is 
 without that form of ornament. Evidently neither 
 rhyme nor alliteration is indispensable to our versi- 
 fication. There is, however, something that makes 
 verse of written or spoken language, whether it be 
 English, French, Latin, German, Greek, or any 
 other tongue. That necessary thing is rhythm. 
 
 • 24.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Now if rhythm, too, does not seem likely to be 
 better understood by our giving a strict definition of 
 it, a short description with a few instances will 
 surely make our meaning plainer. By rhythm we 
 mean the recurrence of some phenomenon at regu- 
 lar, or nearly regular, intervals. It may be the recur- 
 rence of an object seen, or of a sound, or of a sensa- 
 tion received through the general nerve system of 
 the body. A line of street lights at a fixed distance 
 one from another is a rhythm; so is the series of 
 beats coming from the bass drum in a march ; and so 
 is the succession of impressions we feel from the 
 floor of a factory vibrating to the shocks of heavy 
 machinery. The fact that nature is full of rhythms, 
 or that our hearts and our lungs act rhythmically, 
 may or may not account for the interest we take in 
 rhythmic arrangement of every kind; but whatever 
 may be the explanation that physiology or psy- 
 chology has to offer, the nerves of men, and of most 
 of the animals even considerably lower in the scale 
 than men, are responsive to rhythms. Everyone 
 knows from experience how the steady drip of rain 
 or the beat of a steamer's engines will either soothe 
 or drive one to extreme restlessness, according to 
 one's nervous composition or temporary state. For 
 obvious reasons most of our actions, walking, strik- 
 ing, lifting, pushing, and so on, are rhythmic. Man 
 tends at a very early stage of progress to employ 
 
 .25.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 rhythm and to rejoice in it. He advances in his cere- 
 monials by a series of leaps, accompanying his rudi- 
 mentary dance with thumps on some drumlike in- 
 strument; and these rhythms become complicated 
 later, for of course there can be much variety in 
 rhythm, both in sound and design. It may not re- 
 main a simple series of phenomena, but between the 
 sounds or objects or shocks that are necessary to 
 mark the series we can introduce other sounds or 
 objects or shocks, which will break up monotony 
 and give more satisfaction to a mind that has passed 
 the first stages of development. The fact is that 
 civilized man does not like the rhythms of his arts 
 to be simple, and as he becomes highly refined 
 aesthetically he even prefers them elusive rather 
 than obvious. The oriental rug gives a feeling of 
 rhythm in its design without an exactitude of ar- 
 rangement which would force us to recognize it. 
 The style of ornamentation known as Louis XV has 
 ever the suggestion of symmetry without being truly 
 symmetrical, and its rhythm is not quite a series, 
 nor are the forms that go to make the series quite 
 identical forms. The music of races which we call 
 barbaric has a simplicity that refreshes us, but as 
 soon as a modern composer makes use of a primitive 
 rhythm theme he finds that he can make it effective 
 only for a very short time, and that he must begin, 
 as the French say, to embroider on it, and to com- 
 
 . 26.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 plicate it and to halfway disguise it, in order to 
 escape a monotony that would not be to the taste 
 of the modern audience. 
 
 So also with versification. Beginning in absolute 
 simplicity of rhythm the verse of every people 
 moves on to complication, and finally reaches a de- 
 velopment in which its rhythmic structure is not 
 only highly varied but often hard to detect, and 
 sometimes existent only in theory. But however 
 complicated the dance or the music or the design, 
 there is a rhythmic basis without which the piece of 
 art would not be what it is called. Verse is based 
 on a rhythm, no matter how much that fact may be 
 obscured by other characteristics equally obvious; 
 and we must return to the consideration of rhythm 
 itself as constituted in speech if we are to establish 
 the essential quality of versification. 
 
 In the case of a drum there is a rhythm of con- 
 cussions. Beginning with a series of blows of equal 
 force at equal intervals of time, the player may sub- 
 divide these intervals by other blows, singly or in 
 little groups, and he may also vary the intensity of 
 such blows according to some scheme, so that the 
 resultant effect is what is known as "drumming a 
 tune." He has produced a complicated rhythm, but 
 the phenomena that compose it are of only one kind. 
 When music is in question the rhythm is not by any 
 means so simple, especially if the instrument used, 
 
 . 27 .
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 a violin for instance, is one that can give a scale of 
 notes and can prolong a note. Speech is the product 
 of a musical instrument, the larynx with its vibrat- 
 ing "cords" and the resonance chambers above it, 
 modified by the stoppages, releases, and other noises, 
 called articulation. Speech, therefore, has facilities 
 for being rhythmic beyond those generally put to 
 profit, for all that is needed for rhythm is the power 
 to break continuity, to find intervals or contrasts. 
 Cicero said, "there is no rhythm in what is con- 
 tinuous. In drops of water falling we can note a 
 rhythm because there are intervals between them. 
 In a flowing river we cannot." Here is a dictum that 
 permits us to get rhythm in speech in many ways if 
 we choose. 
 
 In English the most marked phenomenon and 
 therefore the one which more than any other de- 
 termines our rhythms, is what we shall term stress 
 accent. Just what this is, whether loudness of utter- 
 ance alone or a certain intensity due to loudness 
 combined with change of musical pitch and also 
 with a slight protraction of the word or syllable 
 stressed, is not vital to our explanation at this point. 
 We emphasize unconsciously certain parts of words 
 and certain words in our sentences, like this: We 
 have seen him to-day, and you have not. It is the 
 more or less regular recurrence of emphasis or stress 
 accent that makes prose more or less rhythmic, and 
 
 .28.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 English verse, reduced to its lowest terms, is char- 
 acterized by such stress accents arranged with ap- 
 proximate exactness according to some plan. The 
 word approximate has been used because the ear is 
 tolerant of variation in the length of the intervals 
 which separate the stresses both in music and verse. 
 A stanza from In Memoriam will exemplify a very 
 simple and regular rhythm, or stress scheme : 
 
 I envy not in any moods, 
 
 The captive void of noble rage, 
 The linnet, born withm the cage, 
 
 That never knew the jammer woods. 
 
 Not quite so clear, but really as regular, is, 
 
 I sprang to the stirrup and Jorls and he. 
 
 I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three. 
 
 In our verse the intervals between the phenomena 
 essential to the rhythm are measured generally by 
 the number or the length of the syllables filling 
 them ; but in certain cases the proper duration of the 
 interval is obtained by a natural pause in utterance. 
 Such an expedient is to be seen, or rather heard, in, 
 
 Break, break, break, 
 
 On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 Break, break, break, 
 
 At the foot of thy crags, O Sea! 
 
 .29.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 The terms meter and metric express this regularity 
 in the measure of the rhythm intervals, and in its 
 exactness of measure lies the distinction of Eng- 
 lish verse from English prose. When the natural 
 stresses of speech attain a certain degree of regu- 
 larity in recurrence the literary form ceases to be 
 prose and has become metrical, that is, verse. This 
 is merely another way of saying that verse approxi- 
 mates more closely than prose to perfect rhythm. 
 Our verse, however artificial in construction, re- 
 quires no sophistication in its utterance. Its basis is 
 the stress accents which mark the natural speech, 
 and a natural way of speaking metrical lines, like 
 those just quoted, will give the stresses their ap- 
 pointed places and will properly measure the spaces 
 between them. 
 
 Now, it may well be that other languages have 
 not the same striking characteristic as ours, and it 
 would not, therefore, be reasonable to expect them 
 to make use of that as the chief phenomenon in their 
 rhythms. Each people, on the contrary, might be 
 counted upon to employ a thing peculiar to itself, 
 and obvious in its language, as its rhythm basis. In 
 German we find a versification whose essential is the 
 same as our own, and therefore we read German 
 poetry with sensuous pleasure, even when we under- 
 stand it very imperfectly. We say it has a natural 
 "swing" to it, that is, natural from our point of 
 
 .30.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 view. Greek verse, however, is radically different. 
 Whatever it was in the speech of the Greeks that 
 corresponded to our stress accent, it was evidently of 
 small account in their versification. They used to 
 mark their rhythm by the contrast of long and short 
 syllables. The Greek hexameter, verse of six feet, 
 reproduced by the Romans in the form so familiar 
 to most of us in Vergil's Aeneid, is an example. All 
 through the classic Greek and Latin verse we find 
 this rhythm principle, which depends upon some 
 sort of scheme of "longs" and "shorts." 
 
 If a system of versification could be so built up, 
 it is fair to infer that in Greek there must have been 
 a clear and perhaps invariable relation between the 
 long and the short syllables. We may almost believe 
 that it was a ratio of two to one, as a "long" was 
 taken as equivalent to two "shorts." Now, in the 
 English of to-day no such ratio can be said to exist, 
 nor can any such thing be found in French. In both 
 of these languages some syllables are unquestionably 
 longer than others, some at least twice as long as 
 some others; but the great majority of vowels and 
 syllables are indifferent in length, that is, duration, 
 and all of them vary greatly according to situation 
 and circumstances. For that reason, if for no other, 
 a system of versification cannot be based on length 
 in English or French. The experiment has been often 
 tried in both languages, especially in French at the 
 
 •3 1 •
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 time of the Renaissance, when every effort was made 
 to force French poetry into classic moulds. 
 
 The Romans evidently had, or tried to have, a 
 sharp enough distinction between "longs" and 
 "shorts" to enable them to adopt the Greek princi- 
 ple in the literary speech versified; but it is doubt- 
 ful whether that principle was ever a natural one in 
 Italy outside of the Greek colonies. At any rate, in 
 the Roman Empire, filled as it was with people 
 whose Latin was that of the lower orders, often 
 learned from the legionary soldiers, and spoken with 
 inborn foreign tendencies, the distinction in vowel 
 or syllable quantity, as it is called, could not be 
 kept up. We have proof that even in classic times 
 Popular Latin verse was, like our own, based upon 
 stress accent. Some lines cited by Tobler to illustrate 
 this point show how the soldiery early in the history 
 of the Empire made verses: 
 
 Casa.r Ga/lias subegit, Nicomedes C^sarem. 
 Ecct CWsar nunc trizmphat qui sutagit Ga/lias. 
 Nico?tti?des non triz/mphat qui subegit CWsarem. 
 
 Here no relation between rhythm and quantity, or 
 length of syllables, is to be detected. We know also 
 that the first Christian hymns, written in Latin, were 
 negligent of quantities, and dependent for rhythm 
 upon stress accent. Yet French, one development 
 of the Latin language, never bases its versification 
 upon alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables. 
 
 .32.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 We do not intend to say that, however different 
 in basis, systems of versification are wholly diver- 
 gent one from another. The modern French use lines 
 of a fixed number of syllables and exact the use of 
 rhymes. Stress accent, alliteration, and vowel quan- 
 tity they make effective, but only incidentally. 
 While with us and the Germans stress accent is a 
 fixed and all-important characteristic of words and 
 phrases, and also of our versification, in the quanti- 
 tative verse of the ancients the normal word accents 
 seem to be in complete conflict with the rhythm. 
 In French the stress accent is to some degree de- 
 termined, and for the rest disregarded, without 
 affecting rhythm as conceived by the French mind. 
 Yet it does affect it, just as a clever or inspired ar- 
 rangement of long and short syllables does influence 
 the movement of both English and French verse, 
 though such arrangement is not to us, as it was to 
 the Roman of the Augustan age, a primary con- 
 sideration. 
 
 So we see that, human speech being what it is, 
 and having a common stock of elements, the three 
 systems of versification, which may be called respec- 
 tively quantitative, syllabic, and accentual, have 
 much in common. What is essential to one may be 
 no more than the ornament of another. Rhyme, 
 which French verse cannot do without, is certainly 
 an immense adjunct in our own. Quantity, though 
 
 •33-
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 not obviously important in either French or English 
 prosody, is of the greatest value to both. In order to 
 compare, as far as necessary for our purpose, the 
 French with the English versification, one important 
 point must be brought into a sharp light at once. 
 Whatever may have been the early determining 
 cause of its character, modern French verse is to be 
 understood only through a proper appreciation of 
 the great peculiarity of the French language, — its 
 weak, shifting, and almost intangible stress accent. 
 
 34
 
 IV. 
 FRENCH STRESS AND RHYTHM 
 
 If it ever could have been made the chief 
 phenomenon of rhythm the stress accent in French 
 is certainly no longer available for that purpose. In 
 the first place, this accent is not strong. Many for- 
 eigners are inclined to deny that it exists at all, and 
 most of them are unable to say where it falls, either 
 in the word or the phrase. The French themselves 
 are generally unsatisfactory if appealed to for in- 
 formation as to the character or the place of stress 
 accents in their own sentences. They seem to be 
 incapable of repeating a group of words without 
 changing either the force or the incidence of this 
 emphasis, and are even less able to appreciate the 
 fact that they have made a change. French phoneti- 
 cians, of course, have made investigation of such 
 stress as is characteristic of their language, and to 
 them we must go for confirmation of notions on so 
 important a matter. Just why the average French- 
 man cannot fix definitely upon the emphasized 
 words or syllables in his own utterance, the discus- 
 sion that is to follow may possibly show. The diffi- 
 
 •35-
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 culty experienced by an English-speaking person in 
 making such a decision about what the Frenchman 
 utters, is due not only to the weakness of the French 
 stress, but also to the fact that we are not accus- 
 tomed to hearing unstressed vowels clearly enunci- 
 ated. However distinctly an Englishman speaks, 
 and as a rule he speaks much more distinctly than 
 an American, he throws all the unstressed vowels 
 into a kind of common obscurity of sound. So we 
 associate stress with clearness. We stress to insure 
 that quality, and from clearness we infer stress. 
 
 In French no vowel except unaccented e can ever 
 be treated with neglect. With this reservation, it is 
 exact to say that all the vowel sounds of a French 
 word have equal distinctness of pronunciation. But 
 however much this fact tends to deceive our ears, 
 there is really a stronger emphasis given to the last 
 fully sounded syllable of the isolated word than to 
 any other. Taking each word separately, it is proper 
 to say, etat, porter, jument, courir, cite, representa- 
 tif. As already said, this stress is at best slight, but 
 its existence cannot be doubted. The early speech of 
 the region now called France was almost entirely 
 made up of words naturally developed from Latin 
 forms. In every case of such development the sylla- 
 bles following the chief stress of the Latin word 
 fell completely into silence or were reduced to a 
 final e. This left a language composed of: (a) mono- 
 
 .36.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 syllables; (b) words of the class of etat, porter, 
 jument, etc., just cited; and of (c) a third kind, in 
 which e, unaccented, was retained as an indistinct 
 sound after the stress, such as, me me, porte, telle* 
 arbre, montagne. The final e in the last category is 
 less than a syllable in value always, and in most 
 instances is not pronounced at all. So the rule is that 
 a French word is stressed on the last fully pro- 
 nounced syllable, and in obedience to it all foreign 
 words adopted in France have taken such stress, no 
 matter what may have been their habit in the lan- 
 guage from which they were borrowed. This is true 
 of the sporting terms coming from the English now, 
 such as steppeur, jockey, handicaper, and quite as 
 true of the words introduced from Latin and Greek 
 at the period of the Renaissance, and of those com- 
 pounded by scientists every day to meet new needs. 
 The result is a language that, as far as individual 
 words go, has but one place for the stress accent. 
 Whether or no this uniformity of position is in any 
 way responsible for the fact that to the French the 
 stress accent plays so small a part in the character 
 of a given word, and being negligible has become 
 so slight as to be almost indistinguishable, is not 
 worth our attention here. Perhaps, feeble as it is, 
 this stress might become a basis for rhythm if it were 
 a perfectly constant thing. 
 
 But speech, particularly French speech, is not a 
 
 •37- 
 
 2G241J2
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 string of single words separated by infinitesimal 
 silences. In French the words are run together in 
 little groups, the connection in each group being 
 very close, and the length of the group being dic- 
 tated by the sense, that is, by logical punctuation, 
 or by the speaker's need of taking breath. These are 
 known as sense groups or breath groups, and form 
 the true units of speech, which words, except from 
 the grammarian's point of view, are not. One divides 
 a phrase unconsciously more or less like this: 
 
 Le vieillard restait assis, tantot devant le seuil 
 
 sous l'auvent, tantot pres de l'atre, selon les heures 
 
 de pluie ou de soleil. 
 
 Now we soon find that every word in a group 
 does not necessarily have a stress. In unemphatic 
 utterance, only here and there a stress appears, and 
 then on the last syllable of each group. Here are 
 some examples taken from certain phonetic tran- 
 scriptions by M. Paul Passy. 
 
 Nous dirions au contraire: Oui monsieur, par approba- 
 tion de ce qu'a dit Monsieur Jouxdain. 
 
 Pour bien suivre votre pcnsee, et traiter cette mztiere en 
 \>\n\osophe, il faut commencer, selon Vordxe des choses, par 
 une txacte connaisjance de la mztiere des lettxes et de la 
 d\x\krente maniere de les prononcer toutes. 
 
 It will be noticed that although the words stressed 
 by M. Passy are all so treated on a final syllable, 
 
 .38.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 there are some without any stress whatever. This 
 indicates that in such words the different syllables 
 have practically equal importance as uttered in their 
 particular situations. If an English sentence were 
 to be marked in a similar manner, so as to indicate 
 its natural stresses, of course much the same result 
 would be reached, except that our words when 
 stressed would not be so upon final syllables only, 
 but each would have its emphasis in the position 
 characteristic of itself. 
 
 However, this is not the only difference between 
 French and English stress accent arrangement. 
 There is another which gives us more trouble. When- 
 ever a Frenchman speaks with emphasis, unusual 
 animation, or emotion, he stresses, if not much 
 more heavily than in common usage, by putting the 
 stress accent of the important word on some syllable 
 other than the last. As an isolated word charmante 
 would be stressed on the second syllable; but M. 
 Passy begins a statement about Moliere's Bourgeois 
 Gentilhomme in this way: (We stress as his own 
 phonetic transcription indicates.) 
 
 Dans cette ckarmante piece, Moliere met en scene . . . 
 
 Here his enthusiasm causes him to say a word with 
 the stress accent distinctly on its first syllable. 
 
 This peculiarity of French is to be noted every- 
 where in animated speech. It follows, therefore, that 
 
 •39-
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 two readers of a given phrase may stress its words 
 quite differently, a thing that adds to the difficulty 
 of determining any plan of stress accents in a given 
 passage. And of course this displacing of stresses 
 can be more frequent on one occasion than on an- 
 other in the speech or reading of the same person. 
 M. Passy notes a remark made by one of his pupils 
 that on a certain day his lecture had been almost en- 
 tirely free from such changes in the position of stress 
 accents, whereas he generally made great use of 
 them. The fact was explained by fatigue on the part 
 of M. Passy that day. He had spoken lanquidly, or, 
 at least, without emphasis. The writer himself heard, 
 in 1911, a well-known young actor of the Comedie 
 Francaise, M. Guilhene, tell a foreigner to be care- 
 ful to stress French words on their final syllables. 
 He gave an example from a line under discussion, 
 "cantique divin." Then, in his effort to teach the 
 pupil to declaim, he went on, "try to say these two 
 words with more life, like this, 'cantique div'mV " 
 The confusion of the pupil, a German, was notice- 
 able; but the teacher felt no inconsistency. 
 
 Finally, we must increase obscurity by admitting 
 that there are some French words which are almost 
 never stressed according to rule, i.e., on the last 
 syllable. Following out what has been shown of the 
 effect of emphasis on the place of stress accent, it is 
 easy to understand that words generally used in ex- 
 
 . 40-
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 clamatory fashion can acquire stress on the first or 
 second syllable, and become almost characterized 
 by the special accent. M<?chant, coqu'm, tfzz'serable, 
 menttuv, are common cases of this peculiarity, but 
 there are scores of others which are almost invari- 
 ably uttered in the same way. 
 
 It is not desirable to take up at this point the 
 question of secondary, or even minor stress accents 
 in French words and breath groups. Thus far our 
 intention has been to make clear that the slight con- 
 trast it offers and its want of fixity in location, 
 render the stress accent of French inadequate as a 
 basic phenomenon of rhythm. If it plays any part 
 in versification, and, as we hope to show in proper 
 place, it surely does, that part is subordinate. 
 
 Prosodic experiments made at various times with 
 a stress accent basis have had no success with French 
 readers. The most extensive and most persistent of 
 such attempts have been made by Van Hasselt, a 
 Belgian, on whom no doubt the influence of the 
 Flemish, in which he also versified, was exerted. 
 That language, an offshoot of Low German, has a 
 strong and fixed stress, which appears to give to 
 speakers of French in Belgium and the so-called 
 Flemish provinces of France a false conception of 
 the character of their own tongue in this regard. The 
 work of Van Hasselt, though effective when one is 
 forewarned and remembers to stress heavily and 
 
 . 41 .
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 regularly, does not rank as French verse. It is really 
 no more so than is Sabatier's translation into French 
 of Goethe's Faust, made some twenty-five or more 
 years ago, in which the Germanic stress rhythm of 
 the original is imitated. 
 
 It is really unnecessary to explain further than 
 has already been done why the French language has 
 no rhythm based upon the distinction between long 
 and short syllables, this distinction having been 
 almost entirely lost before Latin developed into 
 French. 
 
 It has been said that in French, as in English, 
 there is no definite ratio between short and long 
 syllables. Moreover, in French at least, its position 
 in the breath group has a decided influence on the 
 length of any long or half-long syllable. Some 
 curious tables established by A. Gregoire in Varia- 
 tions de Duree, a study of this question in La Parole, 
 1899, demonstrate the variability of duration of 
 syllables according to their distance back from the 
 end of a group or phrase. These variations are of 
 course slight and have more significance to students 
 of experimental phonetics than to readers of poetry. 
 But the fact that they exist without, as a rule, being 
 noticed aurally, adds force to the common state- 
 ment that the French has no fixed relation between 
 long and short syllables. Both French and English 
 avail themselves of such length distinctions as they 
 
 . 42 .
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 can render effective in verse. Neither language bases 
 its rhythm upon them. 
 
 What then is the basis in French verse, which 
 must be sought? We think it to be primarily the 
 syllable-distance between pauses. By the expression 
 syllable-distance is meant the distance measured in 
 syllables, just as material distance may be measured 
 in yards, or any other of the recognized units of 
 length. Of course, syllables not being all of equal 
 duration, the actual distance and time between 
 pauses varies; but as regards the number of units 
 counted it is constant. 
 
 To make use of visual rhythm for a moment, let 
 us accept the old critic's phrase that poetry is "la 
 floraison du parler" This "bloom of speech" finds 
 support in formally arranged syllables, as real 
 flowers often find support in earthenware pots. If we 
 place a great many flowerpots in a line on a garden 
 wall, so that after each ten there shall be an open 
 space of a foot, we shall have a series of spaces re- 
 curring at intervals of ten pots. The pots are not 
 all of the same size or shape or color; but there are 
 ten of them in each division, and therefore the 
 pauses can be seen as recurring rhythmically. Here 
 the phenomenon used to form a series is not a light, 
 a post, a sound, or a shock; it is something negative, 
 it is the absence of a flowerpot. Still there can be 
 no doubt that the arrangement gives us the im- 
 
 •43-
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 pression of a rhythm, and answers to the description 
 of one. There is contrast and regularity, just as when 
 we make a series of black marks on a white surface 
 or white ones on black. So far the visible rhythm 
 has been exemplified; but the same kind of series 
 may be conceived of in sound. A series of brief 
 silences is as truly a rhythm as any other series. A 
 French stanza is made up of a string of syllables, 
 quite as a paragraph of prose is, but the pauses, 
 which occur in prose without noticeable regularity 
 of time or distance, are, in the verse, spaced with 
 careful calculation, and are separated one from an- 
 other by an exact number of syllables. Nothing can 
 be more rigidly insisted upon in French verse than 
 the precise counting of syllables. It is the only un- 
 controvertible necessity in the art as practiced by 
 the Classic and Romantic versifiers. Speakers of 
 English are not as a rule sensitive to rhythm of the 
 kind now presented, but if our attention is called 
 to it we are not impervious to its appeal. Much of 
 the rhythmic effect made by the following extract 
 from a well-known letter of Lincoln's is plainly due 
 to the regularity of pauses. Being in prose, this 
 regularity is not so nearly absolute as that of the 
 silences in verse. 
 
 If there be in it any statements or assumptions of fact 
 
 .44.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 which I know to be erroneous, I do not now and here con- 
 trovert them. 
 
 If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to 
 be falsely drawn, I do not now and here argue against 
 them. 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 The sooner the national authority can be restored, the 
 nearer the Union will be, — the Union as it was. 
 
 If there be those who would not save the Union unless 
 they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree 
 with them. 
 
 If there be those who would not save the Union unless 
 they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree 
 with them. 
 
 In this extract the sense dictates the places of pause ; 
 and the sense of the following lines renders inevi- 
 table the pauses which are their main characteristic 
 in the matter of rhythm. 
 
 Thou who hast slept all night upon the storm, 
 
 Waking renewed on thy prodigious pinions, 
 
 (Burst the wild storm"? Above it thou ascended'st, 
 
 And rested on the sky, thy slave that cradled thee,) 
 
 Now a blue point, far, far in heaven floating, 
 
 As, to the light emerging, here on deck I watch thee, 
 
 (Myself a speck, a point on the world's floating vast.) 
 
 Far, far at sea, 
 
 After the night's fierce drifts have strewn the shore with 
 
 wrecks, 
 With reappearing day as now so happy and serene, 
 The rosy and elastic dawn, the flashing sun, 
 
 .45.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 The limpid spread of air cerulean, 
 Thou also reappearest. 
 
 As an instance of a form that is just between prose 
 and verse, this sample of Walt Whitman's work is 
 very serviceable. Occasionally one is led to think 
 that Whitman versifies, but inspection shows that 
 though a line here and there has a rhythm of 
 stresses, like 
 
 Trickle drops ! my blue veins leaving ! 
 or 
 
 My limbs, my veins dilate, my theme is clear at last, 
 
 or 
 
 Tears ! Tears ! Tears ! 
 
 In the night, in solitude, tears, 
 
 which would be recognized as English verses, there 
 is no continuation of such a stress scheme. His lines, 
 however, often display a certain length roughly 
 measured in words, and if he had been more exact 
 in his observance of this line length he might have 
 produced rhythms on that basis. As it is, Whitman's 
 writings are not normal English verse, and yet to 
 most ears they are rhythmic from an almost regular 
 recurrence of pauses. They are more rhythmic than 
 the Lincoln letter, but their rhythm is chiefly from 
 the same cause. When true verse in English is con- 
 sidered we discover that it is constructed in lines 
 
 .46.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 separated from one another by pauses; but neither 
 the number of words nor the number of syllables to 
 a line is invariable. Our attention is so taken up by 
 the stress accents and their proper spacing either by 
 silences or intervening unstressed syllables, that the 
 whole number of words or syllables is of small con- 
 sequence to us. In the lines already cited, 
 
 Break, break, break, 
 
 On thy cold gray stones, O sea ! 
 
 we are satisfied with the fact that each contains 
 three great stresses. We do not feel any inconven- 
 ience because one has three syllables and the other 
 seven. We seem to be measuring from line-end pause 
 to line-end pause by the time as beaten by the three 
 stresses. We could insist upon a like number of 
 syllables. If some English verse has observed exact 
 syllabic measure, the observance is not a necessity 
 to us, who have the measure by stresses. 
 
 To pass now to French. It will be noticed that the 
 specimen below is divided by pauses whose occur- 
 rence is dictated by the sense of the passage. Whether 
 it is verse or not is immaterial here. And if it is 
 verse, we are concerned only with the rhythm which 
 results from pauses at a fixed syllable distance one 
 from another. 
 
 Quoi ! dit-elle d'un ton qui fit trembler les vitres, 
 J'aurais pu jusqu'ici brouiller tous les chapitres, 
 
 .47.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Diviser Cordeliers, Carmes et Celestins; 
 J'aurais fait soutenir un siege aux Augustins ; 
 Et cette eglise seule, a mes ordres rebelle, 
 Nourrira dans son sein une paix eternelle! 
 Suis-je done la Discorde? et parmi les mortels, 
 Qui voudra desormais encenser mes autels? 
 
 A natural reading of the foregoing produces a brief 
 rest for the voice at the end of each line, that is, as 
 French prosodists count, after each twelfth syllable. 
 The next extract will show a silent interval after 
 every eighth syllabic division. 
 
 Sous l'herbe pour que tu la cueilles, 
 II met la fraise a'u teint vermeil, 
 Et te tresse un chapeau de feuilles, 
 Pour te garantir du soleil. 
 
 Puis lorsque sa besogne est faite, 
 Et que son regne va finir, 
 Au seuil d'avril tournant la tete, 
 II dit : "Printemps, tu peux venir !" 
 
 Before continuing, we must remark that a rhythm 
 of this peculiar kind, a rhythm in which short 
 silences are spaced by sounds forming sequences 
 much longer in point of time, strikes us rather as 
 sounds occasionally broken by rests, and we think 
 of stanzas like the preceding as measured lines of 
 syllables. We call it metrical, but it is rhythmic as 
 well, for the measure is from pause to pause. 
 
 .48.
 
 V. 
 THE BASIC RHYTHM OF FRENCH VERSE 
 
 The French versifiers measure their lines 
 with extreme, some think excessive, accuracy. A 
 strict, and in man}' respects arbitrary, code of rules 
 governs the counting of the syllables. As, with even 
 the most superficial purpose, one must know the out- 
 lines and application of this code in order to appreci- 
 ate the sound of French verse, in another chapter 
 we shall present some consideration of it. Here it is 
 sufficient to say that the vowel e is not considered a 
 syllable when, having no accent mark, it is the last 
 vowel of a line; nor does <?, without accent mark, 
 at the end of any word have syllabic value when 
 the following word begins with a vowel or mute h. 
 In all other cases e forms a syllable with the con- 
 sonant preceding it. (We refer to e in its own char- 
 acter as a vowel, of course, and not as a component 
 of the representations of single sounds, «, eau, ce, 
 ue, eu, ceu, known as digraphs and trigraphs.) For 
 example, in the first line of the extract last quoted 
 the final be of herbe is counted a syllable, while 
 the -les of the end word, cueilles, is not. In the 
 
 .49.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 second line, the final e of f raise disappears because 
 elided with the au following it. Hence each of these 
 lines contains eight syllables. For the present, all 
 unaccented es which have syllabic value should be 
 pronounced like e in le, vie, de, etc. . . . , that hav- 
 ing been the natural pronunciation in the early part 
 of the seventeenth century. Two lines will ex- 
 emplify the practice, which, though archaic, is by 
 no means entirely abandoned by French readers of 
 verse. 
 
 Puis lorsque sa besogne est faite 
 Puis lorsqeu sa besognest faite 
 
 .1   
 
 Et que son regne va finir 
 
 Et queu son regneu va finir 
 
 (The elision of final e in besogne, before est, is in- 
 dicated for the inexperienced reader, although the 
 indication, by w, of the joining of n and est is 
 probably unnecessary.) 
 
 Now it may well be asked if this rhythm, which 
 seems to consist in separating lines of fixed numbers 
 of syllables by slight pauses is all there is in French 
 versification. Decidedly not. Yet it is all that is 
 basic, and whatever else there may be merely em- 
 phasizes or modifies it. Rhyme and stress are most 
 active in those offices. 
 
 Anyone who knows what rhyme is in English can 
 
 • 50.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 dispense with explanation of it in French, so we 
 shall notice at once its function in the rhythm. 
 
 Every line in the two quotations just given ends 
 with a syllable that rhymes with the last syllable of 
 some other line near at hand. This is a rule without 
 exception in French prosody, and therefore is prob- 
 ably motived by necessity or a very strong reason. 
 As a matter of fact, the rhyme announces the pause. 
 Furthermore, the pause at the end of many a line is 
 no longer, or at least no more obvious, than some 
 natural interruption of utterance in the body of the 
 same line. A glance at the fourth and fifth of the 
 lines following will exemplify what is meant. 
 
 Le soleil froid donnait un ton rose au gresil, 
 Et le ciel de novembre avait des airs d'avril. 
 Nous voulions profiter de la belle gelee. 
 Moi chaudement vetu, toi bien emmitouflee 
 Sous le manteau, sous la voilette et sous les gants, 
 Nous franchissions, parmi les couples elegants, 
 La porte de la blanche joyeuse avenue . . . 
 
 After the word emmitouflee of line 4 there is no 
 tendency to arrest the voice, and after elegants, 
 which closes line 6, there is no reason to pause longer 
 than after franchissions, the second word in the same 
 line. In such cases the rhyme is of great value to the 
 rhythm because it habitually indicates that the line 
 is terminated, whether the pause is or is not marked 
 enough to make itself felt. It should not be for- 
 
 .51.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 gotten that verse was originally intended for the 
 ear and not for the eye, though our custom of read- 
 ing rather than listening causes us to ignore that 
 fact. As a sort of signal that the line is complete 
 the rhyme is an aid to the pause and often a sub- 
 stitute for it, and in this function is practically an 
 essential of French verse rhythm. The musical effect 
 of the rhyming syllables is another matter. That 
 quality of it can for the present be treated as an 
 ornament of the verse, but far from being indis- 
 pensable to its structure. The role of rhyme in the 
 kind of rhythm which is produced by pauses at cer- 
 tain intervals is much like that of color, if we were 
 to introduce color into our series of flowerpots on 
 the garden wall. Let us suppose that the tenth pot 
 is blue, the twentieth blue, the thirtieth red and the 
 fortieth red, while the pots which do not immedi- 
 ately announce an open space are of dull and un- 
 noticeable tint. The eye is aided by the presence of 
 a color which it expects, and from it gets something 
 to measure by, even if the following space is very 
 small or quite absent. The ear accustomed to rhyme 
 is similarly helped by the arrival of a sound that it 
 has learned to wait for just before it feels the line 
 to be complete. Without such an adjunct the rhythm 
 of most French verse would hardly be marked 
 enough to deserve the name. 
 
 But what we have just said of rhyme is only 
 
 . 52.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 partly true, after all. It cannot apply to the first 
 of two or more rhyming final syllables. Only after 
 having received the sound can the ear expect its 
 return and hail it as the signal of the line's ending. 
 Hence in the first of two rhyming lines the final 
 syllable is not known by its sound to be final. It 
 must be apprehended as such because the ear has 
 learned to estimate the number of syllables already 
 passed over. To aid this estimate, we discover some- 
 thing else, namely, the stress accent that terminates 
 the line. Now, every rhyme syllable must be a 
 prominent one if it is to be effective, and the stress 
 accent gives it the necessary relief; so in reading or 
 listening we learn, in French, to feel that a stress 
 coming at about the instant when the rhyme and the 
 pause are due, is an intimation that the break in the 
 continuity has come. The stress accent, then, is, with 
 the rhyme, an inevitable adjunct to the basic rhythm. 
 In strictly Classic versification it is indispensable. 
 The French versifier's problem, for these reasons, is 
 threefold; he must produce lines of a fixed number 
 of syllables; he must find rhymes; and he must use 
 words in such a way that the last syllable of each 
 line will be stressed. To do this is to accomplish the 
 simplest French rhythm. 
 
 In the versification which is called Classic it was 
 usual for the line to be complete in thought, that is, 
 to be a sentence or phrase, which, as a logical whole, 
 
 •53-
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 is naturally followed by a pause. The last word of 
 the line therefore received, as is normal in French, 
 a distinct stress. Such a solution of the problem 
 furnished what was needed, — the pause and the 
 prominence of the rhyme syllable. Here is a clear 
 case of it from Racine: 
 
 Mais, quelque noble ardeur dont ils puissent bruler, 
 Peuvent-ils de leur roi venger seuls la querelle*? 
 Pour un si grand ouvrage est-ce assez de leur zele? 
 Doutez-vous qu'Athalie, au premier bruit seme 
 Qu'un fils d'Okosias est ici renferme, 
 De ses fiers etrangers assemblant les cohortes, 
 N'environne le temple, et n'en brise les portes*? 
 Suffira-t-il contre eux de vos ministres saints, 
 Qui levant au Seigneur leurs innocentes mains, 
 Ne savent que gemir et prier pour nos crimes, 
 Et n'ont jamais verse que le sang des victimes? 
 
 And here is another by Boileau : 
 
 On dit que l'abbe Roquette 
 Preche les sermons d'autrui ; 
 Moi, qui sais qu'il les achete, 
 Je soutiens qu'ils sont a lui. 
 
 These verses should be read quite naturally, 
 smoothly, with careful observance of the rests be- 
 tween lines, and with a distinct, but not sudden nor 
 loud stress on the rhymes. The general effect will 
 not be damaged for the English ear if the reader 
 does not yet know how to give its exact quota of 
 
 .54.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 syllables to each line, provided he observes the rule 
 laid down on page 49 as to unaccented e; but the 
 monotony of the verses will be unpleasantly evident. 
 The schemes, in their essentials, are simply these : 
 
 aaaaaaaaaaax, ... 
 
 aaaaaaaaaaax, ... 
 
 aaaaaaaaaaay, ... 
 
 aaaaaaaaaaay, ... etc. 
 
 and 
 
 a a a a a a x, ... 
 a a a a a a y, ... 
 a a a a a a x, ... 
 a a a a a a y, ... 
 
 The verses that are to follow should now be read 
 in just the same manner, and read aloud or mur- 
 mured, as the eye alone will not give a true con- 
 ception of the effect. The English principle of 
 rhythmic arrangement of stresses should be care- 
 fully ignored, and the lines read off without em- 
 phasis, except a stress accent on each rhyming sylla- 
 ble. The pause after every line must be brief but 
 unmistakable. Apart from that, as little attention as 
 possible should be given to meaning or punctuation. 
 Of course this process will not be proper reading of 
 French verse. It will falsify it horribly, by the 
 omission of many characteristics which combine to 
 give the verse beauty. The object of the proceeding 
 recommended is to impress on the memory in the 
 
 •55-
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 beginning an indelible image of the rigid frame- 
 work in which a French poem is mounted. Later, the 
 various subterfuges and licenses by which monotony 
 is dissipated will be made evident, as well as other 
 rhythms that enter into the general result, but which 
 do not affect the basic structure that has been 
 indicated. 
 
 J'ai perdu ma force et ma vie, 
 Et mes amis et ma gaite ; 
 J'ai perdu jusqu' a la fierte 
 Qui faisait croire a mon genie. 
 
 Ouand j'ai connu la Verite, 
 J'ai cru que c'etait une amie; 
 Ouand je l'ai comprise et sentie, 
 J'en etais deja degoute. 
 
 Et pourtant elle est eternelle, 
 Et ceux qui se sont passes d'elle 
 Ici-bas ont tout ignore. 
 
 Dieu parle, il faut qu'on lui reponde ; 
 Le seul bien qui me reste au monde 
 Est d'avoir quelquefois pleure. 
 
 de Mussel. 
 
 Si vous n'avez rien a me dire, 
 Pourquoi venir aupres de moi? 
 Pourquoi me faire ce sourire 
 Qui tournerait la tete au roi? 
 Si vous n'avez rien a. me dire, 
 Pourquoi venir aupres de moi? 
 
 .56.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Si vous n'avez rien a m'apprendre, 
 Pourquoi me pressez-vous la main? 
 Sur le reve angel ique et tendre, 
 Auquel vous songez en chemin, 
 Si vous n'avez rien a m'apprendre, 
 Pourquoi me pressez-vous la main? 
 
 Si vous voulez que je m'en aille, 
 Pourquoi passez-vous par ici? 
 Lorsque je vous vois, je tressaille, 
 C'est ma joie et c'est mon souci. 
 Si vous voulez que je m'en aille, 
 Pourquoi passez-vous par ici? 
 
 Hugo. 
 
 Le laboureur m'a dit en songe: "Fais ton pain, 
 Je ne te nourris plus, gratte la terre et seme." 
 Le tisserand m'a dit : "Fais tes habits toi-meme." 
 Et le macon m'a dit: 'Trends ta truelle en main." 
 
 Et seul, abandonne de tout le genre humain, 
 Dont je trainais partout l'implacable anatheme, 
 Ouand j'implorais du ciel une pitie supreme, 
 Je trouvais des lions debout dans mon chemin. 
 
 J'ouvris les yeux, doutant si l'aube etait reelle: 
 De hardis compagnons sifflaient sur leur echelle, 
 Les metiers bourdonnaient, les champs etaient semes. 
 
 Je connus mon bonheur et qu'au monde oil nous sommes 
 Nul ne peut se vanter de se passer des hommes; 
 Et depuis ce jour-la je les ai tous aimes. 
 
 •57-
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Que le Seigneur est bon ! que son joug est aimable ! 
 Heureux qui des l'enfance en connait la douceur! 
 Jeune peuple, courez a ce maitre adorable ; 
 Les biens les plus charmants n'ont rien de comparable 
 Aux torrents de plaisirs qu'il repand dans un coeur. 
 Que le Seigneur est bon! que son joug est aimable! 
 Heureux qui des l'enfance en connait la douceur ! 
 
 Un oiseau siffle dans les branches 
 Et sautille gai, plein d'espoir, 
 Sur les herbes, de givre blanches, 
 En bottes jaunes, en frac noir. 
 
 C'est un merle, chanteur credule, 
 Ignorant du calendrier, 
 Qui reve soleil, et module 
 L'hymne d'avril en fevrier. . . . 
 
 Lustrant son aile qu'il essuie, 
 L'oiseau persiste en sa chanson, 
 Malgre neige, brouillard et pluie 
 II croit a la jeune saison. . . . 
 
 A la nature il se confie, 
 
 Car son instinct pressent la loi. 
 
 Qui rit de ta philosophic, 
 
 Beau merle, est moins sage que toi! 
 
 Chacun s'en forme un agreable augure. 
 Le seul Amour, l'Amour seul en murmure. 
 Qu'a-t-il confirms 1 ? Pourquoi seul immole, 
 D'entre les dieux sera-t-il exile 
 Quittera-t-il ces demeures heureuses, 
 
 .58.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Ces regions pures et lumineuses, 
 Sejour brillant de gloire et de clarte, 
 Lieux consacres a la Felicite, 
 Aux doux Plaisirs, enfants de l'lnnocence, 
 Plaisirs qu'echauffe et nourrit sa presence, 
 Vifs sans tumulte, eternels sans ennui, 
 Et que les dieux ne tiennent que de lui? 
 
 After having practiced reading in this way till 
 the mind is thoroughly familiar with the regular, 
 simple, and monotonous scheme just furnished, one 
 is not likely to lose sight of the rigid plan upon 
 which all Classic and Romantic verse is built. It is 
 the row of flowerpots, always, spaced by intervals, 
 with the pots that announce those intervals colored 
 alike in twos or threes. We suggest that the stressed 
 syllable be represented by a flowerpot somewhat 
 larger than the others. Now, with such assistance 
 the eye will never fail to perceive the principle of 
 the arrangement, even if certain variations of size, 
 or occasional openings, may occur among the units 
 that are between the significant spaces. 
 
 As a matter of fact, almost every French line 
 longer than eight syllables contains a pause, some- 
 times indicated by the punctuation, sometimes per- 
 mitted by the natural grouping of words according 
 to the sense. This pause in the body of the line is 
 known as a cesura. In lines of eight syllables and 
 less it is by no means obligatory and its position, 
 
 •59-
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 when existent, is very variable; in lines of more 
 than eight syllables it is practically always observed, 
 and its place is, generally speaking, a fixed one. In 
 the twelve-syllable line, the Alexandrine, it appears 
 after the sixth syllable; in the ten-syllable line after 
 the fourth or fifth; it comes after the fifth of the 
 eleven-syllable line; and where there are nine sylla- 
 bles it may be after the third or after the fifth. Ex- 
 cept in the Classic twelve- and ten-syllable lines 
 there is, however, great irregularity about its 
 position. 
 
 What is the reason and what is the effect of such 
 a pause 4 ? In the case of the longer lines language 
 cannot be forced to run for so many syllables with- 
 out grouping its words, hence a break of continuity 
 here and there. The effect of such breaks is most 
 advantageous as regards the sound of the versifica- 
 tion, whose basic rhythm it varies without obscur- 
 ing it. Read now some lines which have lately been 
 used to exemplify that rhythm, giving them, this 
 time, a more expressive utterance, grouping words 
 by the sense and pausing where the cesura is marked 
 by a vertical bar, never forgetting, though, the main 
 diagram's line-end pause, with its stressed rhyming 
 syllable immediately before it. 
 
 Chacun s'en forme | un agreable augure. 
 Le seul Amour, | l'Amour seul en murmure. 
 Qu'a-t-il commis'? | Pourquoi seul immole, 
 
 • 6o-
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 D'entre les dieux | sera-t-il exile? 
 Quittera-t-il | ces demeures heureuses, 
 Ces regions pures [ et lumineuses, 
 Sejour brillant | de gloire et de clarte, 
 Lieux consacres a la Felicite, 
 Aux doux Plaisirs, | enfants de l'lnnocence, 
 Plaisirs qu'echauffe et nourrit sa presence, 
 Vifs sans tumulte, | eternels sans ennui, 
 Et que les dieux | ne tiennent que de lui *? 
 
 On reading these ten-syllable lines with a cesura 
 after the fourth, we find the old diagram modified. 
 Yet it is monotonous because the Classic practice 
 was to assign a definite place to the cesura. The 
 Romantic poets felt the advantage of freeing the 
 cesural pause and of using it in different parts of 
 the line. This had been only occasional in the prac- 
 tice of the Classic versifiers, just frequent enough to 
 make a diversion from a regularity that was too 
 strict even for the taste of the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries. In the nineteenth the irregu- 
 larity became so general as to be almost a requisite 
 of good verse. Note what variety of grouping of 
 syllables is to be seen here within, and independent 
 of, the scheme of line-end rests. Some lines are so 
 punctuated as to afford practically two cesuras. 
 
 lis se battent — | combat terrible ! | — corps a corps. 
 Voila deja longtemps | que leurs chevaux sont morts; 
 lis sont la seuls, | tous deux, dans une ile du Rhone. 
 
 • 6l .
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Le fleuve a grand bruit | roule un flot rapide et jaune, 
 Le vent trempe en sifflant | les herbes dans l'eau. 
 L'archange saint Michel | attaquant Apollo 
 Ne ferait pas un choc | plus etrange et plus sombre. 
 Deja bien avant l'aube | ils combattent dans l'ombre. 
 Qui, cette nuit | eut vu s'habiller ces barons, 
 Avant que la visiere | eut derobe leurs fronts, 
 Eut vu deux pages blonds, | roses comme des filles, 
 Hier, c'etaient deux enfants | riant a leurs families, 
 Beaux, charmants; | aujourd'hui, | sur ce fatal terrain, 
 C'est le duel effrayant | de deux spectres d'airain. 
 
 It must be admitted that cesura is often found 
 where no punctuation compels it, and no grouping 
 of words suggests it. In such a case it is the natural 
 need of a respite in a long line, and the analogy of 
 preceding lines, that really induce it. There it is 
 usual and permissible. Let us take an example, 
 noting especially lines 5, 7, and 9, in which, if they 
 were not verses, there would hardly be any rest for 
 the voice before the line-end. 
 
 Parle, parle, Seigneur, | ton serviteur ecoute : 
 Je dis ton serviteur, | car enfin je le suis ; 
 Je le suis, je veux l'etre, | et marcher dans ta route 
 Et les jours et les nuits. 
 
 Remplis-moi d'un esprit qui me fasse comprendre - 
 Ce qu'ordonnent de moi | tes saintes volontes, 
 Et reduis mes desirs au seul desir d'entendre 
 Tes hautes verites. 
 
 . 62 .
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Mais desarme d'eclairs ta divine eloquence, 
 
 Fais la couler sans bruit | au milieu de mon coeur : . . . 
 
 No one can have read what has just been quoted 
 without noticing that the cesura is not the only rest 
 permissible or obligatory in a line. Human speech is, 
 after all, not quite as regular in arrangement as a 
 row of flowerpots, but must come out in the groups 
 of words that our thought welds together. When we 
 have come to feel the basic rhythm, and have 
 learned to use the cesura with it, we may safely 
 read with all the natural pauses, and we shall do no 
 harm to our conception of the verse. More than this, 
 we shall find that in these unprescribed pauses there 
 is great possibility of surprises and pleasurable 
 effects. 
 
 Here are two bits of verse as their words are 
 grouped for readers by M. Paul Passy: 
 
 (It must be said that here we find ourselves in a 
 field of great latitude. Whereas the pauses indicated 
 are permissible in a slow reading, most of them are 
 by no means inevitable. In a rapid reading very few 
 of them would be observed, and in the diction of 
 some readers fewer than in that of others. If any 
 such extra-cesural pauses are used they are very, 
 very brief in their duration.) 
 
 Un hymme - harmonieux sort des feuilles - du tremble. 
 Les voyageurs - craintifs, qui vont la nuit - ensemble, 
 
 .63.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Haussent la voix - dans l'ombre, ou Ton doit — se hater, 
 Laissez tout ce qui tremble 
 Chanter. 
 
 Les marins fatigues sommeillent - sur le gouffre, 
 La mer bleue - ou Vesuve epand ses flots - de souffre, 
 Se tait - des qu'il s'eteint, et cesse de gemir, 
 Laissez tout ce qui souffre 
 Dormir 
 
 In the following extract the utterance is not quite so 
 formal in its divisions, the grouping of words being 
 less obvious. Greater rapidity and naturalness are 
 aimed at. 
 
 Midi, - roi des etes, - epandu sur la plaine, 
 Tombe — en nappes d'argent des hauteurs du ciel bleu. 
 Tout se tait. - L'air flamboie et brule sans haleine. 
 La terre est assoupie en sa robe de feu. 
 
 L'etendueest immense, et les champs - n'ont point d'ombre, 
 Et la source est tarie, ou buvaient les troupeaux ; 
 La lointaine foret, dont la lisiere est sombre, 
 Dort - la-bas — immobile, en un pesant repos. 
 
 Seuls - les grands bles muris, tels qu'une mer doree, 
 Se deroulent au loin, dedaigneux du sommeil ; 
 Pacifiques enfants de la terre sacree, 
 lis epuisent — sans peur, la coupe du soleil 
 
 .64.
 
 VI. 
 
 STRESS AND VARIETY 
 
 Thus far, attention has been purposely di- 
 verted from the office of the stress accent in French 
 verse. The natural stresses of speech being all-im- 
 portant in our own prosody, we should have gotten 
 a false conception of French versification if we had 
 started by investigating their function there. Hav- 
 ing accepted another basis of rhythm in French, let 
 us see if stress accents have any influence upon it. 
 In the diagram on page 55 the only stress marked 
 is on the rhyming syllable. Its invariable incidence 
 in that position certainly gives, however slight its 
 character, an emphasis that is heard recurring regu- 
 larly through the whole series of lines. But when 
 reading with our attention first on the rhymes, then 
 on the cesuras, and at last on the other pauses be- 
 tween grouped syllables, have we been able to read 
 entirely without stressing elsewhere than at the line- 
 end 1 ? That would hardly be possible, and certainly 
 would be most unnatural. Of course English readers 
 might stress more strongly than French; but a 
 Frenchman would have a tendency to emphasize the 
 
 .65.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 last syllable before a pause that separates breath or 
 sense groups, just as he emphasizes the end syllable 
 of the whole line before the great pause. He will 
 do this particularly at the end of the most important 
 group in the line and before the most important 
 interior pause, that is, the cesura. And as a matter 
 of fact, where there is a cesura in a line we find 
 the syllable immediately preceding it bearing a 
 stress accent. This is brought about by the arrange- 
 ment of the words so that a prominent and signifi- 
 cant word falls at the point where this second stress 
 accent of the line is to be heard. A reasonably ex- 
 pressive reading of these verses will demand a stress 
 before each cesura, as well as on each rhyme. Stressed 
 syllables are in italics. 
 
 Elle etait bien jolie, | au matin, sans atours, 
 De son jardin naissant | visitant les mtrveilles, 
 Dans leur nid d'ambrome | epiant ses abeilles, 
 Et du parterre en fleurs | suivant les longs detours. 
 
 Elle etait bien jolie, | au bal de la soiree, 
 Quand l'eclat des flambeaux | illuminait son front, 
 Et que de bleus sapkirs | ou de roses paree, 
 De la danse fo/itre | elle menait le rond. 
 
 Elle etait bien jolie, | a l'abri de son voile 
 Qu'elle livrait, flottant, | au souffle de la nuit, 
 Quand pour la voir de loin, | nous etions la sans bruit, 
 Heureux de la connahxt | au reflet d'une itoile. 
 
 .66.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Elle etait bien jolie; | et de pensers touckants, 
 D'un espoir vague et doux | chaque jour embel/z£, 
 L'amour lui manquait seul | pour etre plus jolie/ . . . 
 Paix ! . . . voila son convoi | qui passe dans les champs/ . . . 
 
 So, where there is a cesura, that is, in most lines 
 longer than eight syllables, there is always a second 
 stress; and its place is, in one sense, fixed. The 
 French writers on prosody have little to say on the 
 subject of stress; but that is no reason for believing 
 that it does not play some part in their estimate of 
 the quality of any given verse. To us, foreigners, 
 reading the French, it is clear how much the mo- 
 notony of the rhythm scheme is relieved by this 
 extra emphasis. When the cesura is at its regular 
 post in a series of lines the measured fall of this 
 stress seems to us to add its effect to that of the 
 cesura, which has been already noticed as giving a 
 steady march to the verse. By reading the following 
 with careful attention to the rhythm scheme, and 
 with slight but distinct emphasis on the rhyme and 
 just before the cesura, the movement will be felt. 
 
 Sais-tu pourquoi mes vers | sont lus dans les provinces, 
 Sont recherches du peuple | et requs chez les princes? 
 Ce n'est pas que leurs sons, | agreables, xvombreux, 
 Soient toujours a Yoreille | egalement hcureux, 
 Qu'en plus d'un lieu \ le sens n'y gene la mtsure, 
 Et qu'un mot quelque/cz-f | n'y brave la ctsure: 
 Mais c'est qu'en eux le vrai, \ du mensonge \z\nqueur, 
 
 .67.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Partout se montre aux yeux, | et va saisir le cceur; 
 Que le bien et le mal \ y sont prises au juste; 
 Que jamais un iaquin | n'y tint un rang auguste; 
 Et que mon cceur, | toujours conduisant mon esprit, 
 Ne dit rien aux lecteurs | qu'a soi-meme il n'ait dit. 
 Ma pensee au grand jour | partout s'offre et s' expose; 
 Et mon vers, bien ou mal, | dit toujours quelque chose. 
 
 In the lines below, taken from the Romantic drama, 
 the cesura causes the interior stress to appear now 
 here, now there; and to our ears, at least, this em- 
 phasis becomes an element of variety of great value. 
 
 Ma fille! - Oh! je m'y perdsf | e'est un prodige horrible! 
 C'est une vision/ | Oh ! non, e'est impossible, 
 Elle est partie, | elle est en route pour Evreux. 
 Oh ! mon Dieuf | n'est-ce pas que c'est un reve aifreux, 
 Que vous avez garde ma fille, | sous votre aile, 
 Et que ce n'est pas elle, 6 mon Dieu? \ Si, c'est elle! 
 C'est bien elle! \ Ma fille ! enfant, reponds - moi, dis, 
 lis t'ont assassirc<?<?. | Oh ! reponds ! Oh ! bandits! 
 
 From the last extract given, if from no other, it 
 will be evident to any reader that there may be more 
 than two stress accents in a line of French verse. 
 Minor groups will bear them on their last syllables, 
 and there will be words of importance that must be 
 emphasized. But except for what we call the rhyme 
 stress and the cesura stress, no rule of position is 
 discernible. The other stresses may fall anywhere, 
 
 • 68.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 and their number, though it bears some relation to 
 the length of the line, is not determined. The Alex- 
 andrine, twelve-syllable line, ordinarily has four 
 stresses, but often has only three, and not infre- 
 quently five. 
 
 As the cesura with its precedent stress was gen- 
 erally regular in its arrival in Classic verses, so 
 also these free stress accents followed something like 
 a definite scheme. Even with the slight differences 
 due to varying incidence of emphasis, in examples 
 to be given, the reader will discover what seem, to 
 the English ear certainly, very different movements 
 in lines that are metrically of the same kind. First 
 compare two specimens, emphasizing slightly the 
 syllables in italics. 
 
 Silence done, Moise/ | et toi, parle en sa place, 
 "Eternelle, immuable, \ immense Verite; 
 Parle, que je ne meure | enfonce dans la glace 
 De ma sterili^. 
 
 C'est moun> en eifet, \ qu'a ta faveur celeste 
 Ne rendre point pour fruit | des desirs plus ardents ; 
 Et 1'a.vis du dehors | n'a rien que de ixmeste 
 S'il viechaufie au dedans. 
 
 Cet avis ecoute | seulement par caprice, 
 Connu sans etre aime, \ cru sans etre obserf e, 
 C'est ce qui vraiment tue, \ et sur quoi ta justice 
 Condamne un reprout/^. 
 
 .69.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Parle done, 6 mon Dieu/ | ton serviteur fidele 
 Pour ecouter ta voix \ reunit tous ses sens, 
 Et trouve les douceurs de la vie eternelle 
 En ses d'wins accents. 
 
 Qu'il joz7 dans ton repos, | qu'il soit dans tes orages, 
 Beau /flc, et dans l'as^ci de tes riants coteaux, 
 Et dans ces noirs sapins, | et dans ces rocs sauvages 
 Qui pendent sur tes eaux! 
 
 Qu'il JCt7 dans le zephyr | qui {remit et qui ^ojj^, 
 Dans les iraz^ de tes bords | par tes Z»orij repetes, 
 Dans Vastre au front d'an^rc^ | qui blanckit ta surface 
 De ses mo I les claries/ 
 
 Que le vent qui gemit, | le roseaa qui soupire, 
 Que les parfums leg^rj j de ton air embaurae, 
 Que tout ce qu'on entend, | Ton t> #z7 ou Ton respire, 
 Tout dise: "lis ont aime/" 
 
 That the placing of the stresses has its effect on 
 the French ear also, is evident from at least one 
 fact. When the Romantic poets thought desirable to 
 displace the cesura of the Alexandrine, and in con- 
 sequence failed to break the line exactly in the 
 middle, they continued to make the sixth syllable 
 an accented one, just as it had been in Classic verse 
 when the cesura followed it. The position of the 
 interior obligatory stress must, therefore, have a 
 dominating effect upon the sound of the twelve- 
 syllable line. 
 
 . 70.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 To us of English speech the arrangement of 
 stresses is of course all-important, and we are highly- 
 sensitive to the incessant changes of movement which 
 the French produce by the variations they play on 
 the cesural stress and the free stresses of their 
 longer lines. In reading we must never lose sight of 
 the true basis of the versification, but must learn to 
 hear the movement given by the stress accents as 
 sometimes emphasizing the basic scheme, and as 
 sometimes giving it variety by affording another 
 scheme, founded on stresses, existing within it and 
 not hostile to it. The row of flowerpots is still on the 
 garden wall, divided by well-defined spaces into the 
 same sections of ten or twelve. The highly colored, 
 rhyming, line-end pots are taller than the others, 
 to represent stress. Within each section is a small 
 opening called the cesura. Besides this, before the 
 cesura, and here and there through the section, is a 
 pot taller than its neighbors. These taller, i.e., 
 stressed, flowerpots combine with the shorter ones to 
 form little groups of irregular heights, that offer 
 interest and relief to the eye; but they do not inter- 
 fere with its perception of the formal division of the 
 whole row into sections. 
 
 Finally, in spite of its stiff outline every piece of 
 French verse seems to our hearing to be constantly 
 changing its movement. It is dignified, it is smooth, 
 it is ponderous, it is rapid, it is languid, it is sweet, 
 
 .71.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 it is abrupt — according to the disposition of its 
 cesuras and its stress accents. 
 
 In a general way, such contrasts and the endless 
 variety of effect can be explained by reference to 
 the ancient prosodic unit, the "foot," which has 
 lived in name if not in fact till the present time. 
 The foot does not exist in French, or in English 
 either, we think, as a true component of the verse; 
 but it is a convenient conception for purposes of 
 analysis. As everyone who has had even a smatter- 
 ing of Latin poetry in school knows, it was cus- 
 tomary to divide up the Roman verse into blocks 
 which were certain combinations of long and short 
 syllables. The names of these blocks, or feet, are 
 applied by English prosodists to something different 
 from what they once meant. The Latin iambus, for 
 instance, was a short syllable followed by a long 
 one. In English, with its accentual verse basis, the 
 iambus is an unstressed syllable followed by a 
 stress. A quick way of comparing the two kinds of 
 feet would be this: 
 
 
 Latin or Greek 
 
 English 
 
 Iambus 
 
 ^ — 
 
 Begin 
 
 Trochee 
 
 w 
 
 Injure 
 
 Dactyl 
 
 _ w w 
 
 Temptingly 
 
 Anapest 
 
 *--'>-' 
 
 Refers 
 
 Amphibrach 
 
 ^ w 
 
 Vacation 
 
 Spondee 
 
 
 
 Fence rail 
 
 72
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Whenever attention is paid to stresses such com- 
 binations can be discovered, and the prevalence of 
 any given foot carries with it a movement that is 
 unmistakably characteristic. Looking solely at the 
 accentual arrangement in a French verse we can 
 often find its movement marked by the predomi- 
 nance of some kind of foot. The slight contrast in 
 the stresses, of which we have spoken, makes this 
 division hard to insist upon, but most French verse 
 is decidedly anapestic in general effect. 
 
 Among the anapests, if it were worth while to 
 search for them, many iambuses and spondees could 
 be discovered, or rather concocted, in French Classic 
 and Romantic verse. It would be more difficult, how- 
 ever, to show the opposite accentual tendency, in 
 dactyls and trochees. Even if we were to succeed in 
 such efforts, the process would be no more than a 
 piece of pedantry, having no value as evidence of 
 the real construction of the verse. 
 
 The lines which head the second part of Hugo's 
 Expiation can very properly be taken as anapes- 
 tic, if we pronounce final e without accent mark 
 as a whole syllable, when it is not elided before 
 another vowel. (The single vertical lines divide the 
 verses into feet. The double vertical lines indicate 
 cesuras. ) 
 
 73
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Water loo! | Water/00/ | "Waterloo/ | morne plaine. 
 Comme une on|de qui bout || dans une ur\ne trop pleine, 
 Dans ton ar|que de bois, || de coteaux, | de vallons, 
 
 The next three lines of this poem, however, have 
 not all the same movement : 
 
 La pd\\t mort || mtlait | les som\bres ba\ta'i\lons. 
 D'un cote | c'est {'"Europe, || et de l'<2u| tre la France. 
 Choc sznglant/ | des heros Dieu trompait Vesperance. 
 
 The first of the second three it is easy to mark off 
 into iambuses; the next is plainly anapestic; but 
 the last does not submit really to any division into 
 feet. All we have ventured to do with it is to in- 
 dicate a cesura and such syllables as might, in a 
 reasonable interpretation, get a stress accent. 
 
 For three lines there was a distinctly recognizable 
 movement, in the fourth a change, in the fifth a re- 
 turn to the pace of the first three; and in the sixth 
 there is a perfectly correct French Alexandrine 
 which in stressing presents no similarity to its fore- 
 runners. 
 
 Such is the duty and the privilege of stress accent 
 everywhere in French verse, — to change its com- 
 binations, and thus to give variety of movement 
 within the limits of the outer rhythmic scheme. So, 
 in spite of there being in French no stress basis for 
 verse, there is, in every line, stress rhythm. From 
 our description of rhythms as series, it follows that 
 
 .74.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 very few phenomena (in this case stressed syllables) 
 are necessary to convey the conception of a rhythm. 
 One line of verse will present enough stresses and 
 intervening syllables to show a design, and the next 
 line may confirm it, or (like the music which offers 
 successions of rhythmic phrases and avoids the re- 
 currences of a tune) the following lines may intro- 
 duce many different stress rhythms without pur- 
 suing any of them farther. The French verse, 
 therefore, can be full of variety while its framework 
 is monotonous in its exactness and conformity to 
 pattern. In the constant presentation of new stress 
 rhythms, and the abandonment of them for newer 
 ones, this versification is like the Free Verse of the 
 "Imagists," so popular in English. In its rigidity of 
 form due to syllable count and line length it is, of 
 course, totally different from any Free Verse. The 
 strictly measured lines can hardly recommend it to 
 admirers of "Imagist" poetry; but the facility with 
 which it can exchange one stress rhythm for another 
 should be appreciated by lovers of Masefield, Frost, 
 and Masters. 
 
 75
 
 VII. 
 SYLLABLE COUNTING 
 
 In discussing the existence of stress accent 
 in French verse and its influence upon the verse 
 movement, a digression has been made from the 
 natural line of treatment of our topic, but a digres- 
 sion which was necessary in writing for English- 
 speaking readers, to whom the question of stress is 
 most important. 
 
 Let us now return to the basis of French verse 
 rhythm, the number of syllables between line-end 
 pauses, and see how syllables are counted by Classic 
 and Romantic versifiers alike. To most persons, 
 even to the French themselves at the present time, 
 the system of syllable count seems arbitrary and 
 mysterious. It will not appear so if one remembers 
 that it is merely the system which was in vogue 
 during the life of Malherbe, and that its adoption 
 then was due to its nearly perfect agreement with 
 normal prose utterance. 
 
 Everybody who has given the matter a passing 
 thought realizes that our common alphabet does not 
 afford symbols enough to represent by a separate 
 
 • 76.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 letter every sound in even a single language. In 
 French this inadequacy is very troublesome, and has 
 been compensated for by certain subterfuges. For 
 instance, the sign e stands for different vowels, viz., 
 e, e (or e), e nasal (as in en, em), e followed by 
 some consonant other than m or n (as in expres, 
 essaim) and finally for the vowel which is called 
 "mute" e because it has very little sound or in many 
 cases no sound at all. All students of French know, 
 however, that this vowel in such combinations as 
 le, me, sombre, pauvre, must be pronounced in order 
 to give support to a preceding consonant or group of 
 consonants, and that its value then is about that of 
 eu. In other situations it is really mute, as in fasse, 
 cette, bonne, placement, vie, roses. Between the dis- 
 tinctness of the first sort of "mute" e and the abso- 
 lute silence of the second we are able to recognize 
 several degrees of clearness in this vowel according 
 to the place it occupies, the rapidity of the speaker, 
 and the particular style in which it is employed. 
 In quelquefois, quoique, parce que, presque mort, 
 and similar words and combinations, we still speak 
 of the sound as "mute" e, but we recognize much 
 variability in the importance and length of the 
 vowel. 
 
 The history of e in the function of "mute" e has 
 been one of degeneration ever since the sixteenth 
 century closed, and in some cases this vowel's loss of 
 
 •77-
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 distinctness had begun much earlier. To-day French 
 verse, to speak generally, counts every "mute" e as 
 a syllable because Malherbe found it merely a 
 natural rule to count the letter so. There are but 
 four exceptions to deal with. One is due to elision; 
 one to the fact that the verb-ending -aient and the 
 forms aient and soient (from avoir and etre) were 
 already, in the sixteenth century, pronounced as 
 units without, just as now, any separate sound of e; 
 a third exception is the e following a vowel or 
 diphthong, in such words as criera, tueront, flam- 
 boiement, where it had in Malherbe's day lost its 
 pronunciation. The fourth exception is of a different 
 kind. In case a verse ends in "mute" e it is not 
 reckoned as a syllable either where it is actually 
 sounded, as in arbre, terrible, or where it is silent, 
 as in mode and supposes. 
 Such a line as, 
 
 Quelle honte pour moi, quel triomphe pour lui ! 
 is, therefore, to be conceived as counted or scanned, 
 
 i 2 3 4 s 6 •; 89 10 11 12 
 
 Quelle honte pour moi, quel triomphe pour lui ! 
 
 and the evidence of writers on the subject from 
 Palsgrave, in 1530, to Hindret, in 1687, as to tne 
 pronunciation of the words is conclusive. It must 
 have been about what would be indicated in nine- 
 teenth-century French by the following spelling; 
 
 .78.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Quelleu honteu pour mwe, quel triompheu pour lui 1 
 
 The lines of Du Bellay (1524-1560), which are 
 written, 
 
 Sus, ma petite colombelle, 
 
 Ma petite belle rebelle, 
 
 Qu'on me paye ce qu'on me doit ; 
 
 Qu'autant de baisers on me donne 
 
 Que le poete de Veronne 
 
 A sa Lesbie en demandoit. 
 
 are of eight syllables each, and no doubt produced 
 an effect very like this: 
 
 Sus, ma petiteu colombelleu, 
 
 Ma petiteu belleu rebelleu, 
 
 Qu'on me payeu ceu qu'on meu dwe ; 
 
 Qu'autant deu baisers on meu donneu 
 
 Queu leu poeteu deu Veronneu 
 
 A sa Lesbie en demande. 
 
 At the present time, of course, the pronunciation of 
 French words neither in prose nor verse gives so 
 much value to the "mute" e\ but in reading verse 
 we must not forget that, pronounced or unpro- 
 nounced, this vowel is never treated as a nonentity 
 by the versifier, with reservation, however, of the 
 
 1 In saying that the pronunciation of the syllabic "mute" e was 
 once about what we can represent by eu, the writer must not be 
 taken too literally. The eu is no doubt too full a sound to 
 ascribe to the syllable in many cases ; but we have no closer 
 approximation to offer. 
 
 .79.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 four exceptions just mentioned. The commonest of 
 these exceptions is elision. 
 
 In one situation "mute" e in verse is elided, that 
 is, completely suppressed and ignored. This is when 
 it appears at the end of a word, the following word 
 beginning with a vowel, or with the initial h that so 
 generally in French has no consonant effect what- 
 ever. In the counting of syllables in the following, 
 the final e's of monte, plie, comme, cigogne, vole, 
 and eglise disappear completely from both the cal- 
 culation and the pronunciation: 
 
 Mont(e), ecureuil, mont(e) au grand chene, 
 
 Sur la branche des cieux prochaine, 
 
 Qui pli(e) et tremble comm(e) un jonc. 
 
 Cigogn(e), aux vieilles tours fidele, 
 
 Oh! vol(e) et mont(e) a tire-d'aile, 
 
 De l'eglis(e) a la citadelle, 
 
 Du haut clocher au grand donjon. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to point out that this rule 
 of elision in verse is, properly speaking, not a proso- 
 dist's rule at all. Elision is characteristic of French 
 prose as well as verse, and is practiced in the com- 
 mon speech. "Mute" e is the only vowel sound 
 (barring the i of si before il or Us) which is so 
 treated ; but wherever two words in close connection 
 in sense bring it next to an initial vowel elision is 
 natural. We say race ins ens ee exactly as if it were 
 
 .80.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 racinsensee; and even when a final "mute" e is ordi- 
 narily sounded to support two preceding consonants, 
 as in ample, arbre, and many other words, whose 
 last letter is plainly heard, a following initial vowel 
 will cause it to disappear. It is usual and correct to 
 say "amplenlargeur," for ample en largeur, and 
 "arbrenorme" for arbre enorme. In such cases the 
 initial vowel of the second word supports the group 
 of consonants before it and "mute" e then has no 
 office to perform. The only artificiality in verse 
 elision is in its use regardless of a natural pause be- 
 tween the words in question. In reading prose, and 
 in everyday speech, we would never elide if the 
 sense required a separation of the words; whereas in 
 verse no pause, not even a cesura, is allowed to 
 prevent the rejection of the "mute" e final from the 
 syllable scheme. It is natural to say, without eliding 
 through the comma, Vetoffe est ample, aussi bien en 
 largeur qu'en longueur, and il a des bras comme les 
 branches d'un arbre, enormes et rugueux. Notice, 
 however, this verse, in which a pause, rhetorically 
 inevitable, and making a cesura, has no prohibitory 
 power over the elision of the final e of the first word : 
 
 Cigogn(e), aux vieilles tours fidele. 
 
 It is true that in ordinary pronunciation the final 
 vowel of cigogne is never very clearly heard, sup- 
 porting vowel though it is. But here is a more ob- 
 
 .81.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 vious case of verse elision that is contrary to prose 
 custom : 
 
 Dieu, ton maitr(e), a d'un sign(e) austere 
 Trace ton chemin sur la terre, 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 The final e of maitre is not suppressed by what 
 might be called natural elision, though in the same 
 line the e of signe, on account of the closeness of the 
 connection in sense, would be ignored by the most 
 casual speaker who could be imagined to employ the 
 combination signe austere, though most French peo- 
 ple say signe, like cigogne, with a faint trace of a 
 terminating eu. 
 
 So, while we are maintaining that in the syllabic 
 count elision in general is neither artificial nor diffi- 
 cult for the reader, we have to admit its arbitrary 
 use through important pauses, and must warn 
 against overconfidence in the virtue of natural 
 utterance in opposition to this special rule of versi- 
 fication. The successful management of elision by a 
 reader requires, in nine cases out of ten, nothing 
 more than reproduction of normal prose utterance; 
 in the tenth, though, where "mute" e is elided in 
 spite of a pause following it, some special care must 
 be taken in order to prolong the sound preceding 
 the e and to join it, without too obvious a strain, to 
 the next word. This caution of course applies only 
 
 .82.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 to instances in which the "mute" e in question 
 happens to be a supporting vowel, as it is in the 
 line: 
 
 Dieu, ton maitr(e), a d'un sign(e) austere. . . . 
 
 When the final e belongs to a word in which common 
 speech no longer sounds it, no attention need be 
 given to the effect of the pause. Monte, ecureuil, etc., 
 shows such a word. Monte is here but one syllable 
 because e initial immediately follows it, but as the 
 word is pronounced monf before any pause we have 
 no difficulty to contend with. 
 
 Homme, une femme fut ta mere. 
 
 offers another example in homme. There is no em- 
 barrassment in saying homnC and pausing com- 
 pletely before une femme. 
 
 The last of the four exceptions to the rule that 
 every "mute" e is a syllable, i.e., the neglect of this 
 letter when it is the last vowel of a verse, is to be 
 explained in a very different way. When the laws 
 of French versification were, so to speak, enacted, 
 the final "mute" e could not have been ignored be- 
 cause it had no sound; for we know positively, as 
 said above, that it had a decided sound, and even 
 now many a verse ends with an e that cannot be 
 silenced. Such lines exhibit plainly a superfluous 
 syllable. 
 
 .83.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 La Thrace, errant sur les montagnes, 
 Remplit les bois et les campagnes. 
 
 Seigneur, dans ton temple adorable 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 Ce sanctuaire impenetrable 
 
 O Christ ! il est trop vrai, ton eclipse est bien sombre, 
 La terre sur ton astre a projete son ombre. 
 
 The fact is that in the pronunciation of the six- 
 teenth and seventeenth centuries every line that 
 finished in a feminine rhyme, i.e., ended with a 
 syllable containing "mute" e, in -e, -es, or ~ent, had 
 one syllable more than its theoretical quota. This 
 condition was admitted, and can yet be admitted 
 in such verses as have just been cited, because the 
 sound, which approximates that of eu, falls after 
 the great stress accent of the line and, therefore, 
 seems to be within the line-end pause. Being always 
 very short and usually indistinct, the vowel did not, 
 and does not fill the pause. The rhythm, therefore, 
 is not destroyed by an obliteration of the interval 
 between verses. In such cases the pause was not 
 obliterated, but merely slightly shortened. 
 
 In practice we are not forced to occupy our minds 
 with the final vowel of feminine rhymes. Whether 
 we are obliged to pronounce it, as in sombre, or to 
 neglect it as in chene or mere, the rhythm of the 
 
 .84.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 verse will not be influenced except as the versifier 
 intended that it should be. It is sufficient for the 
 reader to recognize the existence of the extra sylla- 
 ble and to know why it has never been considered a 
 blemish. The measure of any verse will be correct if 
 its syllable count is correct up to, and including, the 
 last stressed syllable. According to this system these 
 are four-syllable verses, as marked for counting: 
 
 \ -2- 
 
 Les Djinns funebr(es), 
 Fils du trepas, 
 Dans les tenebr(es) 
 Pressent leurs pas ; 
 Leur essaim grond(e) : 
 Ainsi, profond(e), 
 Murmur(e) un(e) ond(e) 
 Qu'on ne voit pas. 
 
 Every long line in the extract below is deemed to 
 contain eight syllables: 
 
 Sa grandeur eblouit l'histoir(e). 
 
 Quinz(e) ans il fut 
 Le dieu que trainait la victoir(e) 
 
 Sur son affut; 
 L'Europe sous sa loi guerrier(e) 
 
 Se debattit, — 
 Toi, son singe, marche derrier(e) 
 
 Petit, petit. 
 
 Owing to the development of French pronuncia- 
 tion during the last three centuries the management 
 
 .85.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 of "mute" e in verse is a delicate matter for both 
 versifier and reader, and our discussion must return 
 to the vowel somewhat later. For the present, the 
 question as to when "mute" e is a syllable in verse, 
 and when it is not, has been answered. 
 
 There is, however, difficulty sometimes in decid- 
 ing when contiguous vowels, other than "mute" e, 
 form one syllable, and when they are to be con- 
 sidered sufficiently distinct from each other to fall 
 in separate syllables. For this decision the ordinary 
 pronunciation is the first and best guide. We learn 
 in every French grammar that the language uses a 
 certain number of what are called digraphs, that is, 
 single vowel sounds represented by two letters each : 
 ai, au, ei, eu, ce, ou, ue (as in the words, lait, autant, 
 pleine, feu, ceil, tout, cueillir). No one with merely 
 rudimentary knowledge of French would think of 
 dividing such words into more syllables in verse 
 than they contain in prose. Whatever was the origin 
 of these digraphs and their evolution, from the 
 phonetician's point of view, it suffices us here to 
 know that they are, and were when Malherbe lived, 
 single and irresoluble vowels. The trigraphs, too, 
 eau, ceu (in peau and ceuf) are now simple sounds, 
 which cannot be split into three, or even two sylla- 
 bles. So one seeming source of doubt in syllable 
 count is removed for the reader. In the following 
 lines an inexperienced eye will find no trouble in 
 
 .86.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 recognizing such vowel combinations and giving 
 them their proper syllabic value : 
 
 O peuple des faubourgs, je vous ai vu sublime; 
 Aujourd'hni vous avez, serf grise par le crime, 
 Plus d'argent dans la poche, au cosur moins de fierte. 
 
 Besides digraphs and trigraphs, the French lan- 
 guage possesses some nearly constant diphthongs, 
 that is, combinations of vowels whose sounds are 
 run so closely together as to be deemed in point of 
 time one syllable. The surest examples of these 
 diphthongs are oi and ie (tot, del). It is nearly 
 always safe to assume in verse that oi is one syllable, 
 and ie is only a trifle less likely to be a syllabic unit. 
 Each of these combinations is in most cases the de- 
 velopment in French of a single vowel in Latin, and 
 such developments give two vowel sounds closely 
 fused together. For instance, rien is from the Latin 
 rem, bien from bene, pierre from petram, pied from 
 pedem, avoir from habere, voile from velum, foi 
 from fidem, vient from venit, doit from debet, — the 
 inflectional ending always having been dropped in 
 popular pronunciation at an extremely early day, 
 and the vowel of the stem having been later sounded 
 like a diphthong. Of course, for persons not ac- 
 quainted with the derivation of modern French 
 words such a hint is of no value; but where one 
 knows something of the origin of French, this 
 
 .87.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 method of determining whether oi and ie are syl- 
 labic units is not only useful, but is really the only 
 scientific way of deciding. There are other instances 
 of the diphthongs oi and ie, in which they do not 
 come from single vowel sounds, but from a vowel 
 followed in the Latin by i, this i itself being fol- 
 lowed by another vowel. This is a still less obvious 
 test, as it demands more training in derivations than 
 can be presumed in the case of anyone but a student 
 of Romance philology. Sometimes the French word 
 containing oi comes from a Latin word in which a c 
 has turned into the vowel i after another vowel. 
 The last two cases often give rise also to a com- 
 bination, ui, which is but one syllable; hence it is 
 practicable to look upon ui as a diphthong, as we 
 naturally do in fruit, puits, puis, fuite, nuit, bruit? 
 It must be said, however, that the French poets 
 have not invariably found it convenient to observe 
 the rule, which is after all not a prosodic principle, 
 but a natural law of language; and they have occa- 
 sionally divided ie, and more often ui, into two 
 separate vowels. Theoretically such treatment of a 
 syllabic unit may make trouble for the reader, but 
 practically there is nothing to fear from the proceed- 
 ing, for reasons which will be given further on. 
 
 x It is fair to state that many authorities do not consider such 
 combinations "diphthongs," but a semivowel plus a vowel. The 
 distinction is of no importance in the present discussion. 
 
 • 88.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 To turn back a little, it has been admitted that, in 
 spite of etymology on the one hand, and lists of 
 disputed words as given in French treatises on syl- 
 labification on the other, the common pronunciation 
 is the true guide. It is well to remember, at least, 
 that the common ending -ier is a single syllable and 
 that the -ions and -iez of verbs are also monosyl- 
 labic. When, though, -ions and -iez follow bl, tl, br, 
 dr, tr, vr, that is, the union of what grammarians 
 call a mute with a liquid, it is not easy to keep from 
 separating the i from the o or the e. In the earliest 
 of modern French verse no such division will be 
 found; but after Corneille the pronunciation has 
 seemed to need to attach the i to the bl, br, /r, etc., 
 as a sort of supporting vowel. At any rate, we do 
 not find it easy to say voudrions in two syllables, as 
 we do venions, but in prose as well as verse make 
 vou-dri-ons. 
 
 Leaving out of account the oi, ie, and ui proceed- 
 ing from the Latin sources of which mention has 
 been made, most contiguous vowels in French words, 
 in the first half of the seventeenth century, were 
 assigned by cultivated pronunciation to separate 
 syllables, and therefore were counted in verse as 
 distinct syllabic units. This separation was not truly 
 such, because in the natural evolution of French 
 words from Latin ones the vowels in question had 
 never been combined in diphthongs. The separate 
 
 .89.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 utterance of them was, like so many other things in 
 versification commonly deemed arbitrary, perfectly 
 natural. In most of the cases of this kind consonants 
 in the body of Latin words had gradually weakened 
 in popular speech till they disappeared completely, 
 leaving two vowels standing together, but, as may be 
 inferred, in different syllables. Fairly obvious ex- 
 amples are: saltier from salutare, cruel from crude- 
 lem, louer from locare, prier from precare, and suer 
 from sudare. Besides words that were developed 
 from the Latin without premeditation, the language 
 has many that are known as mots savants or learned 
 words, that is, constructed by persons familiar with 
 the Latin, Greek, Italian, etc., and these reproduced 
 the syllables of the originals regardless of any chance 
 contiguity of vowels. 
 
 Here it may well be asked how the reader is to 
 distinguish in a great number of words between a 
 diphthong and two vowels which belong to separate 
 syllables. The best method in practice is to trust to 
 one's knowledge of the sound of common words, 
 keeping in mind the digraphs and trigraphs and the 
 diphthongs oi, z>, and ui, and assuming that un- 
 known vowel combinations are to be in two or even 
 more syllables. The prescription is neither precise 
 nor scientific, but will seldom lead us astray. For 
 English-speaking readers of French verse the differ- 
 ence in audible effect between a diphthong and two 
 
 .90.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 independent syllables is too slight to alter the length 
 of any except the shortest lines, therefore an occa- 
 sional misapprehension in this particular will not 
 result in damage to the rhythm. The French them- 
 selves, in reading their poetry, actually pronounce 
 many diphthongs in cases where the versifier was 
 obliged to count more than one syllable. In another 
 section of this book their habit will be referred to 
 with greater detail in explanation of another matter; 
 but at this point a little attention must be directed 
 to it. 
 
 The science of phonetics makes clear that some 
 vowels require more muscular effort in their enuncia- 
 tion than others. Among the French vowel sounds 
 those represented by i, u, and ou are the extremes 
 in their respective classes; i demanding the highest 
 and most forward position of the front part of the 
 tongue, with the greatest sidewise tension of the 
 lips; u the same position of the tongue, and the 
 greatest protrusion of lips; while ou requires the 
 highest position of the back of the tongue, and at 
 the same time greatest protrusion and pursing of the 
 lips, with muscular tension of the pharynx. Natu- 
 rally, such a statement will indicate little to anyone 
 who is not a student of phonetics; but it can easily 
 be understood as meaning that these three vowels 
 must take unusual energy for their production. The 
 tendency of the French during more than a century, 
 
 . 91 .
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 at least, has been, when giving i or u or ou immedi- 
 ately before another vowel, to abandon as quickly as 
 possible the necessary extreme effort and proceed to 
 the formation of the following vowel ; for in all these 
 diphthongs it is the second vowel that is stressed. 
 The outcome of the habit is noticeable in the spoken 
 language to-day, in which nearly all vowel combina- 
 tions beginning with i or u or ou are diphthongs, 
 regardless of derivation or earlier custom. Saluer is 
 usually pronounced in two syllables, contribuer has 
 three, douane has one, piano, two, viande hardly 
 more than one in spite of something like a support- 
 ing vowel at the end of it. Ouest is sounded in al- 
 most as short a form as our word "west," and suicide 
 has now only two syllables in familiar style. 
 
 If the dictionary of Littre be consulted such diph- 
 thongs as these will be found to be condemned 
 wherever there is any chance of their occurrence. 
 M. Littre was struggling to exclude from his lan- 
 guage something which his very condemnation 
 proves to have become common during his lifetime 
 (1801 to 1881) or even earlier. In the dictionary 
 published some twenty years ago by Hatzfeld and 
 Darmesteter great numbers of words are given as 
 being pronounced in verse each with one syllable 
 more than in prose. Opening the book at random we 
 see: Compassion [kon-pa-syon; en vers, -si-on] and 
 Differentiel [di-fe-ran-syel; en vers, -si-el] and Eva- 
 
 .92.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 cuer [e-va-kue; en vers, -ku-e] and Fouir [fwir; en 
 vers, fou-ir]. This means that Hatzfeld and Darme- 
 steter admit the comparatively recent diphthongs 
 beginning with i, u, and ou, but call attention to the 
 former value of each as two syllabic units, which 
 value verse retains. The reader of verse can, with the 
 explanation just offered, recognize and understand 
 the phenomenon, while he yields to the older manner 
 of the versifier in treating the vowels under con- 
 sideration as separate. And, as already stated, he 
 runs little risk of spoiling a verse by making a mis- 
 take in this particular. His danger is even less than 
 it would be if the vowel i of the diphthong were 
 really equivalent in duration to our y, or ou the 
 exact representation of our w. These French vowels, 
 called often semivowels or semiconsonants when in 
 the diphthongs, are audibly more separate from a 
 following vowel than our y or w. Iambe has a sound 
 that is not quite fairly given by the first element of 
 the English word "yam," nor is ouest quite the 
 monosyllable "west." The middle position, between 
 monosyllables and dissyllables, occupied by the 
 French diphthongs of recent and popular pronuncia- 
 tion makes their variation in either direction an ex- 
 cusable liberty. Whatever a dictionary may pre- 
 scribe on the subject, few French people would feel 
 inconvenience from hearing suicide called su-icide 
 in verse, while on the other hand they would hardly 
 
 •93-
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 notice that the verse had been curtailed by its pro- 
 nunciation with one syllable less than the poet had 
 intended it to contain. The difficulty for an English 
 tongue is great when it is a question of saying ia, ie, 
 w, iu, ua, ue, uo, oua, oue, out, ouo, just as the 
 French say them. In fact, it is rare for us ever to 
 reach a degree of precision in the language of the 
 modern Gauls at which we are able to notice that 
 there is such a difficulty to be met. Fortunately for 
 us, there is little damage done to the French verse 
 if we ignore the point entirely while we read. 
 
 Here it is proper to recommend the reading and 
 analysis of a certain quantity of French verse, in 
 order that the division into syllables may become 
 familiar, and that the eye may detect without delay 
 the scansion of each line. After the following ex- 
 tracts have been noted and completely understood, 
 with the aid of the marking introduced wherever 
 doubt as to the division of syllables might be felt, 
 there would be advantage in taking up some an- 
 thology of French poetry, and in trying to distin- 
 guish and mark for oneself the syllable count. But 
 it must not be forgotten that the pronunciation, like 
 an abbreviated eu, of every "mute" e which forms a 
 syllabic unit is by no means the custom of to-day 
 among readers of French poetry. It is time to speak 
 of the difference in sound which the nineteenth-cen- 
 tury way of treating "mute" e has brought to the 
 
 .94.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 verse, and to give some explanation. First, however, 
 let the reader become reasonably perfect in his 
 syllable counting. In the extracts following, vowel 
 combinations treated by the versifiers as diphthongs 
 are italicized in such instances as could by any 
 possibility be thought doubtful. 
 
 PARAPHRASE DU PSAUME CXLV 
 
 N'esperons plus, mon ame, aux promesses du monde: 
 Sa lumzere est un verre, et sa faveur une onde 
 Que toujours quelque vent empeche de calmer. 
 Quittons ces vanites, lassons-nous de les suivre ; 
 
 C'est Dieu qui nous fait vivre, 
 
 C'est T>ieu qu'il faut aimer. 
 
 En vain, pour satisfaire a nos laches envies, 
 
 Nous passons pres des rois tout le temps de nos vies 
 
 A souffrir des mepris et ployer les genoux. 
 
 Ce qu'ils peuvent n'est rien ; ils sont comme nous sommes, 
 
 Veritablement hommes, 
 
 Et meurent comme nous. 
 
 Ont-ils rendu l'esprit, ce n'est plus que poussz<?re 
 
 Que cette majeste si pompeuse et si fiere 
 
 Dont l'eclat orgzzi?zlleux etonne l'univers ; 
 
 Et dans ces grands tombeaux ou leurs ames hautaines, 
 
 Font encore les vaines, 
 
 Ils sont manges des vers. 
 
 La se perdent ces noms de maitres de la terre, 
 
 D'arbitres de la paix, de foudres de la guerre ; 
 
 Comme ils n'ont plus de sceptre, ils n'ont plus de flatteurs, 
 
 .95.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Et tombent avec eux d'une chute commune 
 Tous ceux que leur fortune 
 Faisait leurs serviteurs. 
 
 Malherbe. 
 
 CHIMENE 
 
 Reprenons done aussi ma colere affaiblie : 
 
 Pour avoir soin de \ui faut-il que je m'oublie? 
 
 On le vante, on le loue, et mon coeur y consent! 
 
 Mon honneur est muet, mon devozr imp&zssant ! (mu-et) 
 
 Silence, mon amour, laisse agir ma colere: 
 
 S'il a vaincu deux rois, il a tue mon pere ; (tu-e) 
 
 Ces tristes vetements, ou je lis mon malheur, 
 
 Sont les premiers effets qu'ait prodwzt sa valeur ; 
 
 Et quoi qu'on die ailleurs d'un cceur si magnanime, 
 
 Ici tous les objets me parlent de son crime. 
 
 Vous qui rendez la force a mes ressentiments, 
 Voiles, crepes, habits, lugubres ornements, 
 Pompe que me prescrit sa premiere victoire, 
 Contre ma passion soutenez hien ma gloire ; (pas-si-on) 
 Et lorsque mon amour prendra trop de pouvoir, 
 Parlez a mon esprit de mon triste devoir, 
 Attaquez sans rien craindre une main triomphante. 
 
 (tri-om-phante) 
 
 Corneille. 
 
 SUR LA MORT D'UNE JEUNE FILLE 
 
 Son age echappait a l'enfance; 
 
 Riante comme l'innocence, (ri-an-te) 
 
 Elle avait les traits de 1' Amour. 
 
 Quelques mois, quelques jours encore, 
 
 .96-
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Dans ce ccewr pur et sans detour 
 Le sentiment allait eclore. 
 
 Mais le del avait au trepas 
 Condamne ses jeunes appas; 
 Au del elle a rendu sa vie, 
 Et doucement s'est endormie, 
 Sans murmurer contre ses lois. 
 Ainsi le sourire s'efface ; 
 Ainsi meurt sans laisser de trace 
 Le chant d'un oiseau dans les bois. 
 
 Parny. 
 
 TRISTESSE 
 
 J'ai perdu ma force et ma vie, 
 Et mes amis et ma gaite; 
 J'ai perdu jusqu' a la Hertz 
 Qui faisait croire a mon genie. 
 
 Quand j'ai connu la Verite, 
 J'ai cru que c'etait une amie ; 
 Quand je l'ai comprise et sentie, 
 J 'en etais deja degoute. 
 
 Et pourtant elle est eternelle, 
 Et ceux qui se sont passes d'elle 
 Ici-bas ont tout ignore. 
 
 T)ieu parle, il faut qu'on \ui reponde; 
 Le seul bierx qui me reste au monde 
 Est d'avoir quelquefois pleure. 
 
 de Musset. 
 
 .97.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 SAISON DES SEMAILLES 
 
 LE SOIR 
 
 C'est le moment crepusculaire. 
 J'admire, assis sous un portail, 
 Ce reste de jour dont s'eclaire 
 La demure heure du travail. 
 
 Dans les terres, de nuit baignees, 
 Je contemple, emu, les haillons 
 D'un vz>illard qui jette a poignees 
 La mczsson future aux sillons. 
 
 Sa haute silhouette noire (si-lhou-et-te) 
 
 Domine les profonds labours. 
 On sent a quel point il doit croire 
 A la iuitt utile des jours. 
 
 II marche dans la plaine immense, 
 Va, vzVnt, lance la graine au loin, 
 Rouvre sa main et recommence, 
 Et je medite, obscur temoin, 
 
 Pendant que, depltfjant ses voiles, 
 L'ombre, ou se mele une rumeur, 
 Semble elargir jusqu'aux etoiles 
 Le geste auguste du semeur. 
 
 Hugo. 
 
 A L'HIRONDELLE 
 
 Toi qui peux monter solitaire 
 Au cie\, sans gravir les sommets, 
 Et dans les valloas de la terre 
 Descendre sans tomber jamais; 
 
 .98.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Toi qui, sans te pencher au fleuve 
 
 Ou nous ne prisons qu'a genoux, 
 
 Peux aller boire avant qu'il pleuve 
 
 Au nuage trop haut pour nous; (nu-a-ge) 
 
 Toi qui pars au declin des roses 
 Et revzens au nid printam^r, 
 Fidele aux deux meilleures choses, 
 L'independance et le {oyer; 
 
 Comme toi mon ame s'eleve 
 
 Et tout a coup rase le sol, 
 
 Et suit avec l'aile du reve 
 
 Les beaux meandres de ton vol ; (me-an-dres) 
 
 S'il lui faut aussi des voyages, 
 
 II lui faut son nid chaque jour; 
 
 Elle a tes deux besoins sauvages : 
 
 Libre vie, immuable amour. (im-mu-a-bl') 
 
 Sully-Prudhomme. 
 
 CHANSON D'EXIL 
 
 Triste exile, qu'il te souv^nne 
 Combzen l'avenir etait beau, 
 Quand sa main tremblait dans la tzenne 
 Comme un oiseau, 
 
 Et combien ton ame etait pleine 
 D'une bonne et douce chaleur, 
 Quand tu respirais son haleine 
 Comme une fleur ! 
 
 .99.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Mais elle est loin, la chere idole, 
 
 Et tout s'assombrit de nouveau ; 
 
 Tu sais qu'un souvenir s'envole 
 
 Comme un oiseau ; 
 
 Deja l'aile du doute plane 
 Sur ton arae ou nait la douleur; 
 Et tu sais qu'un amour se fane 
 Comme une fleur. 
 
 Coppee. 
 
 . 100.
 
 VIII. 
 
 
 MANAGEMENT AND INFLUENCE 
 OF "MUTE" E 
 
 In observing and pronouncing the "mute" e 
 to the full extent that the correct syllable count 
 requires, the reader has not done all that is necessary 
 to restore to French verse its original, i.e., its seven- 
 teenth-century, effect. A close running together of 
 the words, a natural peculiarity of the language, 
 must be accomplished. This has, of course, been 
 brought about to some extent by elision, which often 
 reduces to a single word such a pair of words as 
 temple eternel (templeternel) or nombre infini 
 {nombrinjinz) . It has, moreover, been incalculably 
 aided by the prosodists' rule excluding hiatus. No 
 versifier in French may permit the former of two 
 successive words to end in any vowel but "mute" e, 
 if the second word begins with a vowel sound. This 
 prescription, which has been inviolable since Mal- 
 herbe's day, prevents our discovering in a French 
 verse such expressions as, alle avec nous, il a ete, 
 Dieu a dit, qui avait, etc. We do not find even et il, 
 et on, et elles, etc., because, the / of et never being 
 
 . 101 •
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 heard, hiatus could not be avoided. Here, it must be 
 acknowledged, is an arbitrary law of French versifi- 
 cation, enacted in the interest of smoothness of 
 sound, but certainly a very good law. The prose 
 speech is unpleasantly overstocked with successions 
 of vowel sounds, as English is with s and z; our 
 poets avoid by common consent too many hissing 
 words in their lines, while the French submit to the 
 hardship of rejecting many combinations of great 
 rhetorical value, because of the absolute rule against 
 hiatus. At the line-end pause, it is plain, hiatus 
 troubles no ear, because there is a rest for the voice, 
 and the time is ample for the transition from one 
 vowel to another. Lamartine writes, 
 
 C'est le souffle divin dont tout homme est forme, 
 II ne s'eteint qu'avec son ame. 
 
 Such successive verses are not common, however, 
 and neither at the cesura nor at any other pause 
 within a line may there be an appearance of hiatus. 
 Appearance is purposely used in this connection ; for 
 if the pause is noticeable there can be no true hiatus 
 whatever. Overcarefulness on the part of the versi- 
 fier is hardly to be blamed, as it sometimes might be, 
 because elision itself not infrequently fails to banish 
 hiatus. If in the two lines below, "mute" e disap- 
 pears with good effect, it is because the elided vowel 
 leaves a consonant: 
 
 • 102 .
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 De ce dieu terribl(e) et puissant, 
 
 Au moindr(e) effet de sa fureur. 
 
 A "mute" e following another vowel is extinguished 
 only to leave a hiatus behind it. In Leconte de Lisle's 
 line, for instance, Le Temps, VEtendue et le N ombre 
 there is -u(e)et, which, though permissible, would 
 not be praiseworthy except for its position at a 
 palpable pause. Another example is, La rosee en 
 pleurs; another is, La brise qui se joue autour de 
 for anger. 
 
 The strict rule against hiatus, however it may 
 hamper the versifier, is of immense assistance to the 
 reader of verse, and certainly does not tax his atten- 
 tion. Except in the case of making liaison where it is 
 feasible, he has nothing to do but let himself profit 
 by the absence of awkward vowel successions from 
 word to word. 
 
 There is enough, though, for the reader to do in 
 the interest of smoothness if he omits no possible 
 liaison : for in verse the prescription is to sound every 
 final consonant which comes before an initial vowel, 
 no matter how important the pause that may fall 
 between the consonant and the vowel in question, 
 and regardless of custom in prose or familiar speech. 
 Only the m and n which have disappeared in sound 
 from the end of such words as parfum and com- 
 
 . 103.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 pagnon, leaving a nasal vowel behind, are not to be 
 restored unless they happen to be heard in certain 
 combinations of words in the ordinary language. 
 In such familiar cases as are to be seen in the lines 
 quoted below, liaison with the final n is as obligatory 
 in verse as in the most unpretentious prose : 
 
 Car son peuple l'oublie en un lache sommeil. 
 
 La terre sur ton astre a projete son ombre. 
 
 Leaving out of consideration the liaison with m and 
 «, as regards which verse reading is now precisely like 
 prose reading, in verse it is theoretically necessary 
 to join in the enunciation every final consonant to its 
 succeeding initial vowel. In sustained, serious prose 
 this rule is only operative in part, while in common 
 speech the liaison is very frequently neglected. Of 
 the three kinds of utterance, the most formal, verse, 
 is the simplest for a foreigner to manage, as far as 
 the liaison is involved. He simply reverts to the 
 habit of the sixteenth century in the pronunciation 
 of all consonants which stand immediately before 
 vowels. 
 
 Spelling in French, as in English, is now so fan- 
 tastically far from being phonetic that one is ex- 
 cusable for forgetting the fact that most letters 
 which are used have some reason for their presence; 
 
 . 104.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 but it is nevertheless true that their existence where 
 they seem purposeless is almost invariably due to 
 some function once performed. Final consonants in 
 French words, with a few exceptions, are soundless 
 survivals from a time when they were distinctly 
 heard. That time was drawing to a close in the six- 
 teenth century just when the present prosodic system 
 was being formulated. About 1580 practically every 
 final consonant was sounded pretty distinctly before 
 a pause in reading or speaking. It was not heard, 
 however, if there was no pause between the word it 
 terminated and a succeeding word beginning with a 
 consonant. This state of affairs merely signifies that 
 the final consonant sound was a part of the word, 
 not, as now, a superfluous letter ; but, it having long 
 been the habit of the French to suppress in the body 
 of a word the first of two contiguous consonants, 
 the habit naturally was extended to two closely con- 
 nected words, which, in the French manner of run- 
 ning sense groups or breath groups together, became 
 temporarily fused in one. Gradually getting used 
 to words without final consonant sounds, the talkers 
 of the nation conceived most words to end thus, in 
 no matter what situation. So chat is cha\ and roux 
 is rou\ etc.; but to the writers, and especially the 
 printers, of French the final consonant has never 
 been lost to sight, however devoid of sound. And in 
 1580 no final consonant coming before the initial 
 
 • 105 •
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 vowel of the next word was affected by the tendency 
 to disappear, that tendency being due only to the 
 difficulty presented to French speakers by two con- 
 sonants coming together. We call the retention of 
 the final consonant before an initial vowel liaison; 
 but it is nothing, after all, except the normal pro- 
 nunciation of the French of a former time, in some 
 cases having been historically continuous down to 
 our day, in others a restoration. And in many in- 
 stances in verse which are opposed to the prose 
 usage of to-day, it is a deliberate retention of the 
 custom of former times, and is traditional, as well 
 as being indispensable to the prevention of the dis- 
 jointed effect of hiatus. 
 
 To read the verse of the Classic period, then, in 
 the Classic manner, we should make every liaison 
 in the interior of each line, regardless of pauses, and 
 should not forget that m and n when final were 
 treated like other consonants in this respect. At 
 present, except in the instances where liaison of final 
 n is universally obligatory (as between noun and 
 adjective, ton ami, or noun and preposition, en une 
 
 heure, or verb and pronoun subject or object, on a 
 
   
 
 fait, on en arrive), the French never make liaison 
 
 with n. For m there is no exception. But Classic 
 verse made it with final n everywhere, and thus 
 avoided what looks to us now like hiatus in many 
 
 . 106.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 a position in the lines of even that master of polished 
 Alexandrines, Racine. As an example of what is re- 
 ferred to, here are verses from Andromaque, in 
 which cases of inevitable hiatus to the twentieth- 
 century ear, were liaisons to the readers of the 
 seventeenth. 
 
 Ne vous suffit-il pas . . . 
 
 Qu' Hermione est le prix d'un tyran opprime; 
 
 . . . Pour couronner ma joie. 
 
 Dans leur sang, dans le mien il faut que je me noie. 
 
 Mais enfin a l'autel il est alle tomber. 
 
 Not one of the three liaisons indicated would 
 naturally be made by a reader to-day. Tyran, mien, 
 and enfin would each end in a nasal vowel, and in 
 no case would the least suggestion of n be prefixed 
 to the word following. 
 
 At last, having combined elision and liaison (in- 
 cluding that of m and n in all instances) with the 
 strict syllabic value of "mute" e, we are able to read 
 Classic French verse with a fairly close imitation of 
 its original sound. Certain differences, as oi being 
 like we, or the c in secret being actually a g in 
 sound, need concern us no more than does in English 
 verse the fact that gold was once called goold, and 
 ear had much the sound of air. We have the general 
 effect and, what is more important, we have the type 
 which every French versifier has in his mind, and 
 
 • 107.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 the fundamental structure which every intelligent 
 reader of French verse must refer to, no matter how- 
 he modifies it in order to conform to the pronuncia- 
 tion of to-day. 
 
 How does the natural present-day pronunciation 
 of French manage to accommodate itself to the strict 
 canon of Malherbe and the prescription of Boileau, 
 when verse is read or declaimed*? In the first place 
 it must be granted that many actors neglect rhythm 
 almost entirely. The dramatic is ever and every- 
 where the foe of exactly measured utterance. Con- 
 sequently foreigners are inclined to think that 
 French verse as heard from the stage is scarcely to 
 be distinguished from prose, and very jerky prose 
 at that. Even reciters, called by the French diseurs, 
 are often so preoccupied by the "effects" to be ob- 
 tained that they spoil what the versifier has taken 
 infinite pains to construct. It is the fashion to repeat 
 La Fontaine's fables at children's entertainments, 
 but with so much dash, archness, and comic abrupt- 
 ness that rhyme itself disappears; and the young 
 audience probably does not suspect that La Fontaine 
 wrote poetry. Of course, what is meant here by 
 modern treatment of verse is not this dramatic disre- 
 gard of its very structure, a disregard, by the way, 
 which must not be thought characteristic of the 
 greater interpreters of the Classic theatre; for no 
 small part of their genius is shown in combining with 
 
 . 108 .
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 their action a wonderfully rhythmic and sonorous, 
 yet seemingly natural, enunciation of the great 
 Alexandrines. The reading and speaking of poetry 
 primarily as poetry, particularly in the lyrics, is 
 totally different from the search after theatrical 
 effectiveness, and must aim at giving to both rhythm 
 and rhyme their full part in the poetic composite. 
 
 Rhyme needs no special effort from the reader. 
 It is there before his eyes, and he accepts it as some- 
 thing given him by the versifier, something he does 
 not have to try to control ; in fact, he cannot control 
 it. He cannot divest the verse of the sound of it, 
 unless he deliberately violates the punctuation and 
 spoils the sense. He cannot even damage the rhyme 
 without mispronouncing words, for French pro- 
 nunciation has not changed enough since Ronsard 
 to endanger this feature of the verse, syllables that 
 rhymed for Ronsard having, as a rule, changed 
 together and rhyming for us also. 1 
 
 But with the gradual diminution of the syllabic 
 value of "mute" e in prose, — a process that has 
 reduced to silence the final "mute" e of all words in 
 which it is not a supporting vowel, — there has grown 
 up a method of reading verse by means of which 
 
 *A few syllables may be met with forming exceptions to this 
 statement, notably -ois, -oit which once had the sound of -oes, 
 •oet, -ur for eur sometimes sounded like -eur, and the -us final of 
 Latin names pronounced formerly like the -us final in French, but 
 now sounding the s. 
 
 . 109.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 this vowel exists partly through the imitation of 
 archaic pronunciation, and partly by what may be 
 termed a prosodic fiction. No reader of French verse 
 can pronounce all the "mute" e's that Boileau, for 
 instance, would have expected to have a sound; and, 
 knowing this fact, very few French versifiers since 
 the Romantic movement gained a footing have 
 written with the purpose of having all of their 
 "mute" e syllables sounded. Probably when Boileau 
 wrote, in the seventeenth century, 
 
 Telle qu'une bergere, au plus beau jour de fete, 
 De superbes rubis ne charge point sa tete, . . . 
 
 he intended that one should say "Telleu qu'uneu"; 
 but it is almost impossible to comply with his inten- 
 tion in the present state of French speech. When 
 Theophile Gautier wrote, about two hundred years 
 later, 
 
 C'est bien elle toujours, elle que j'ai connue, 
 
 he hadn't the least intention that his readers should 
 pronounce "elleu." At any rate, he had good grounds 
 for thinking they never would do so, and he must 
 have felt that the verse would be good in spite of 
 two occurrences of elle. However, in his line, 
 
 De peur qu'une pensee amere ne s'eveille, 
 
 he might have counted upon a reading of "uneu" 
 or (l a?nereu" but very likely he knew his generation 
 
 • no.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 better than to believe that both the "mute" e's would 
 be observed in the same verse. 
 
 What actually is to be done with "mute" e, and 
 what versifiers for the past eighty years evidently 
 have counted upon, is to dispose of it in one of three 
 ways. The first is by a decidedly old-fashioned dis- 
 tinctness in its utterance, which sometimes is in con- 
 formity with current practice and sometimes is truly 
 archaic. The consciousness that the e is there is taken 
 as justification when it is sounded rather more 
 formally as a supporting vowel than would be usual 
 in prose. And as its function is considerable, even in 
 prose, when it arrives fortuitously between con- 
 sonants which need support and separation for their 
 proper clearness, in such places the reader of verse 
 sounds it with some slight exaggeration. This is not 
 unnatural to the French ear, but only a trifling em- 
 phasis given to a perfectly normal sound. We should 
 always in verse make a separate syllable of final e 
 in tremble and maztre and quelque, when there is no 
 elision to suppress it, as well as of the e in the body 
 of a word like ornement (orneument) or fortement 
 (forteument) ; and so we should do also when the 
 "mute" e falls, as in le reste du temps, and il com- 
 mence ce soz'r, between two consonants which are 
 called identical, i.e., are formed by the same position 
 of the speech organs. This separation of / and d in 
 reste du temps and of c and c in commence ce, is 
 
 . 111 .
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 almost inaudible in common conversation, becomes 
 plainer in formal discourse or reading, and is at its 
 maximum in verse. In this connection it must be 
 noted too that the use of liaison in verse often brings 
 about this very condition and function of the vowel 
 e. In leur courses avides, in order to read as the 
 French read, we must say very clearly cour seu 
 zavid', and when a liaison, as in roses et muguets, 
 brings a juxtaposition of two z's there is all the more 
 obligation to space them; so the pronunciation 
 rozeuze seems a matter of course. But many other 
 "mute" e's are heard in verse, and these are un- 
 deniably archaic in motive and effect. In all mono- 
 syllables such as se, le, ne, de, me, very many of 
 which in certain combinations have no vowel at all 
 in the natural utterance, it is customary to give the 
 e full value. 
 
 Or, tout ce que je desire, 
 
 cannot be, as ordinarily heard, tons' keu j' desire, but 
 is tout ceu queu jeu desire. Very frequently, if not 
 always, the vowel of -ent in the third person plural 
 of verbs, which our first teacher of French has prob- 
 ably told us is never heard, comes out with full 
 sound, especially when a liaison is made with the 
 final consonant. lis comtnencent a voir is heard in 
 verse as Us commenceu ta voir, and eux pensent a 
 toi sounds like eux penseu ta toi. Outside of these 
 
 • 112 .
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 cases the archaic treatment is extended to a great 
 number of "mute" e's for whose pronunciation, un- 
 fortunately, no rule can be given. Individual taste 
 is the only criterion here; and all that ought to be 
 said is that some readers favor the older movement 
 of a verse which contains a large infusion of eu, and 
 others dislike the effect of the sound enough to avoid 
 it where it can be omitted. The character of the 
 poetry, too, must be taken into account before per- 
 sonal preference is given play in this regard. The 
 graver, the slower, the more solemn the effect re- 
 quired, the more frequent should be our recourse to 
 the sound of "mute" e. If the poem is light, familiar, 
 comic perhaps, then "mute" e may be, had better be, 
 literally mute. 
 
 This statement has brought us to the second way 
 of managing a vowel which has, in so great a 
 majority of instances, fallen into silence. We may 
 neglect its sound completely, or give it so brief and 
 so indistinct an existence as to leave merely a pause 
 in the line to mark the place where it once was. The 
 process is similar to introducing a rest in music, 
 instead of filling the bar with the exact quota of 
 notes which the measure indicates. In a word like 
 comme or face, each of two syllables for the proso- 
 dist, but commonly monosyllabic, the present plan 
 is to say comm\ fac\ pausing after the words long 
 enough to satisfy the count of syllables. "But," one 
 
 • 113-
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 may object, "there is nothing now where that e was, 
 and we have been told that French rhythm depends 
 upon the number of syllables between the line-end 
 pauses." That is true, or rather was strictly true 
 when the "mute" e had invariably syllabic value. 
 Now it is a truth only in the conception of the 
 French of average culture, who know that even in 
 such absences of sound as follow comm* and fag* 
 there is a syllable theoretically present. Such an 
 explanation would be as truly nonsensical as it at 
 first appears, if the final e had reached in French the 
 completeness of extinction which that letter has 
 suffered in English. But it has not reached it. The 
 Frenchman who reads and writes may say fag* for 
 face, but he is never oblivious of the fact that the 
 word is face. In spelling it, he would say "/ a, fa, 
 c e, ceii" If he is particularly anxious to be distinct, 
 if he wishes to be heard at a distance, or if he is 
 addressing a class or an assembly, we shall hear him 
 say more or less clearly faceu. The example chosen 
 is a word that is about as commonly a monosyllable 
 in practice as any French word of its length, but it 
 is not as truly monosyllabic as our word face, or our 
 rage or pale, none of which can be conceived to have 
 a syllable in its final vowel, though we may know 
 that such was once its nature. We are too far re- 
 moved in point of linguistic development from the 
 time when such words were dissyllables to feel that 
 
 .114.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 under any circumstances they might be more than 
 monosyllabic now. But the French are not linguisti- 
 cally so distant from their similar phenomenon. 
 "Mute" e, to them, may be heard or not heard, 
 sounded or not sounded. It may be inevitable in one 
 combination and facultative in another. It may be 
 formed as completely as any other vowel in giving 
 emphasis or loudness to some particular word, and 
 it may be eliminated entirely from the same word 
 when uttered rapidly, carelessly, or without stress. 
 Yet "mute" e is to the French mind an entity, and 
 in verse its presence can be felt when its sound is 
 absent, and its place is taken by a "rest," i.e., a brief 
 silence. In the following lines such "mute" e's as 
 are to be represented by "rests" are inverted. 
 
 Marchez ! l'humanite ne vit pas d J une idee ! 
 Elle eteint chaqua soir celle qui l'a guidee, 
 Elle en allume une autre a l'immortel flambeau : 
 Comma ces morts vetus de leur parure immonde, 
 Les generations emportent de ce monde 
 
 Leurs vetements dans le tombeau. 
 
 La, c'est leurs dieux ; ici, les moeurs de leurs ancetres, 
 Le glaiva des tyrans, l'amulette des pretres, 
 Vieux lambeaux, vils haillons de cultes ou de lois : 
 Et quand apres mille ans dans leurs caveaux on fouille, 
 On est surpris de voir la risible depouille 
 De ce qui fut l'homme autrefois. 
 
 .115.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Robas, togas, turbans, tuniquas, pourpre, bure, 
 Sceptres, glaivas, faisceaux, hachas, houlette, armure, 
 Symbotas vermoulus fondent sous votre main, 
 Tour a tour au plus fort, au plus fourbe, au plus digne, 
 Et vous vous demandez vainement sous quel signe 
 Monte ou baissa le genre humain. 
 
 Sous le votre, 6 Chretiens ! L'homme en qui Dieu travaille 
 Change eternellement de formes et de taille : 
 Geant de l'avenir, a grandir destine, 
 II use en vieillissant ses vieux vetements, comme 
 Des membres elargis font eclater sur l'homme 
 Les langes ou l'enfant est ne. 
 
 Lamartine. 
 
 Par la chaine d'or des etoiles vives 
 La Lampe du ciel pend du sombre azur 
 Sur l'immensa mer, les monts et les rives. 
 Dans la molle paix de Fair tiede et pur 
 Bercee au soupir des houles pensives, 
 La Lampe du ciel pend du sombre azur 
 Par la chaine d'or des etoiles vives. 
 
 Elle baigne, emplit l'horizon sans fin 
 De l'enchantement de sa clarte calme; 
 Elle argente l'ombre au fond du ravin, 
 Et, perlant les nids, poses sur la palme, 
 Qui dormant, legers, leur sommeil divin, 
 De l'enchantement de sa clarte calme 
 Elle baigne, emplit l'horizon sans fin. 
 
 Dans le doux abime, 6 Lune, ou tu plonges, 
 Es-tu le soleil des morts bienheureux, 
 
 .116.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Le blanc paradis ou s'en vont leurs songes? 
 O monde muet, epanchant sur eux 
 De beaux reves faits de meilleurs mensonges, 
 Es-tu le soleil des morts bienheureux, 
 Dans le doux abime, 6 Lune, ou tu plonges ? 
 
 Leconte de Lisle. 
 
 Relatively few "mute" e's have been inverted in 
 the two extracts just given. What is to be done 
 with such of the others as do not disappear in eli- 
 sions? Some of them may, others must, have the 
 complete syllabic sound eu. For instance, in the 
 fifth line of the Lamartine verse emportent de is 
 natural as emporteu deu. The distinct utterance of 
 / and d requires such an intervening sound in very 
 formal style, and is perfectly admissible in a poem. 
 
 In the eleventh line of the same extract, we have 
 to say risibleu depouille, because almost any culti- 
 vated person would sound the supporting vowel, 
 especially before the d of the second word. 
 
 But there are other examples of "mute" e, un- 
 elided, which can hardly be disposed of by uttering 
 the sound eu, or by an infinitesimal pause. They 
 must be provided for by some means. Some of those 
 we have inverted could be treated differently. 
 
 The third expedient employed by the French of 
 to-day in the management of "mute" e in their read- 
 ing of verse is to leave it entirely out of the pro- 
 nunciation, with no compensating rest or pause, if 
 
 . 117 .
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 it seems too unnatural to be admitted; but even in 
 this treatment it is not forgotten. Its former exist- 
 ence is recognized, and its absence compensated for, 
 by the lengthening of an adjacent syllable, usually 
 that preceding the neglected sound. In many words 
 which end in "mute" e there is a moderately long 
 vowel in the last fully pronounced syllable, and 
 with the French elasticity in the matter of vowel 
 duration no inconvenience is felt when the syllable 
 in question is stretched a trifle to make up for a final 
 syllable whose omission would otherwise shorten the 
 line. Such words as pere, faire, reve, meme, are not 
 heard, except in singing, as dissyllables; and as their 
 habit is to be decidedly long at the end of a breath or 
 sense group, and of medium length everywhere else, 
 it is less abnormal to give them unusual duration in 
 verse than it would be to require that they be pro- 
 nounced pereu, faireu, etc. But this method of com- 
 pensation is not limited to words of any particular 
 number of syllables, nor to any special classes of 
 words, nor is it always used to the exclusion of the 
 second treatment of "mute" e. It can be resorted to 
 in meme, for example, and the final e can be indi- 
 cated at the same time by a "rest" or by the shortest 
 conceivable vowel sound. What the versifier intends 
 is, of course, that meme should be counted as two 
 syllables, and the reader can convey that intention: 
 by saying memeu, as if he were living in the six- 
 
 . 118.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 teenth century; or by giving a very long mem\ 
 lengthening both the e and the m that follows it; or 
 he may prolong the e and the m to a less degree, and 
 then pause almost imperceptibly for the neglected 
 final e. In the extract which will now be introduced 
 all of these subterfuges that have come in to help 
 readers over the stumbling block of the syllabic 
 "mute" e are to be observed. 
 
 Le grand soleil, plonge dans un royal ennui, 
 
 Brule au desert des cieux. Sous les traits qu'en silence 
 
 II disperse et rappelle incessament a lui, 
 
 Le chceur grave et lointain des spheres se balance. 
 
 Suspendu dans l'abime, il n'est ni haut ni bas ; 
 II ne prend d'aucun feu le feu qu'il communique; 
 Son regard ne s'eleve et ne s'abaisse pas ; 
 Mais l'univers se dore a sa jeunesse antique. 
 
 Flamboyant, invisible a force de splendeur, 
 II est pere des bles, qui sont peres des races, 
 Mais il ne peuple point son immense rondeur 
 D'un troupeau de mortels turbulents et voraces. 
 
 Parmi les globes noirs qu'il empourpre et conduit 
 Aux blemes profondeurs que l'air leger fait bleues, 
 La terre lui soumet la courbe qu'elle suit, 
 Et cherche sa caresse a d'innombrables lieues. 
 
 We owe the noting given below to Professor E. 
 Koschwitz, whose investigation of the reading and 
 pronunciation of certain authors and actors is of the 
 
 . 119.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 highest value. The following stanzas are his repre- 
 sentation of Le Lever du Soleil as read by its author, 
 Sully-Prudhomme. Nearly all indications as to pro- 
 nunciation are neglected here except such as apply to 
 the three manners of treating "mute" e. Where the e 
 is to be heard fully syllabic, with the value of eu, 
 that fact is noted by using an italic letter. An e sup- 
 pressed in the pronunciation and replaced by a 
 "rest" is inverted in the text, 3. The e suppressed, 
 with compensation from the lengthening of a pre- 
 ceding syllable, is represented by an inverted 9 in 
 parentheses (a), and the lengthened vowel or con- 
 sonant is followed by a colon (o:). Elision and 
 liaison are indicated by w between the letters af- 
 fected. The elided e has no special mark. Certain 
 vowels are followed by a colon (Brurle) to show 
 length which is intrinsic and not due to suppression 
 of "mute" e. 
 
 Le grand soleil, plonge dans un royal ennui, 
 
 Bru : le au desert descieux. Sous les traits qu'en silen : ca 
 
 II disperse et rappelle incessamment a lui, 
 
 Le choeur grave et lointain des sphe: r(a) se balan:c3. 
 
 Suspendu dans l'abime il n'est ni haut ni bas ; 
 
 II ne prend d'aucun feu \e feu qu'il communiqua ; 
 Son regard ne s'eleve et ne s'abai: ss(a) pas; 
 
 Mais 1'univers se dore a sa jeunesse anti : qua. 
 
 . 120-
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Flamboyant, invisible a force de splendeur, 
 
 II est pe: r(a) des bles, qui sont pe: r(a)s des racas, 
 Mais il ne peuple point son immen : se rondeu : r 
 
 D'un troupeau de mortels turbulents et voracas. 
 
 Parmi les globas noi : rs qu'il empourpre et conduit 
 
 Aux ble:m(3)s profondeu : rs que l'air leger fait bleuas, 
 La te:rr(a) lui soumet la courbe qu'elta suit, 
 Et chercha sa caresse a d'innombra:bl(3)s lieuas. 
 
 The compensation for the "mute" e that has been 
 wholly or even partly suppressed in modern pro- 
 nunciation, by prolonging a preceding syllable is 
 admirably shown in the verses by Leconte de Lisle 
 given on page 1 16. Syllables naturally long are con- 
 siderably extended in order to make up for the 
 absent sound of an e immediately following. This is 
 especially noticeable in the use of words ending 
 in "mute" e preceded by a nasal vowel and a con- 
 sonant, nasals in such position being always long and 
 susceptible of lengthening without unnatural effect. 
 The words lampe, immense, argente, plonges, songes, 
 monde, mensonges, are of this kind; and the long 
 nasal vowel permits of the obliteration of a succeed- 
 ing e without perceptible shortening of the line. 
 Ckame, tiede, baigne, abzme, reves, are by nature 
 provided with a length in the last vowel but one, 
 which can be made to conceal in similar manner the 
 loss of "mute" e. In some cases, where elision takes 
 
 . 121 .
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 place, there is no exercise of this lengthening privi- 
 lege for the purpose in question. The word enchante- 
 ment is a peculiar instance of the permissible pro- 
 longation of a nasal, for although in such verse as 
 Leconte de Lisle's we may say enchant eument, it is 
 less strange to give the everyday pronunciation 
 enchant' ment, and to prolong the nasal of the second 
 syllable to make up for the disappearance of the e. 
 
 It is not a very long time since the French them- 
 selves knew nothing, or could tell foreigners nothing, 
 about this e as a feature of French versification; but 
 of late their treatises contain much on the subject. 
 Ph. Martinon, in his very clever little book, Com- 
 ment on Prononce le Franfais, has this to say 
 about the "mute" e, whose office in prose he dis- 
 cusses at great length elsewhere: 
 
 "We cannot end this chapter without saying a 
 word on the question of verse, of which 'mute' e is 
 one of the most noticeable charms, and one of the 
 most mysterious. 'Mute' e is one of the most remark- 
 able characteristics of French poetry. Therefore the 
 principles which have just been developed cannot 
 apply to the reading of verse, which exacts a special 
 kind of respect for 'mute' e. Here is a verse from 
 Victor Hugo's V Expiation: 
 
 'Sombres jours! l'Empereur revenait lent^ment.' 
 We will let the actors articulate nine syllables, as 
 
 . 122.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 if it was a sentence from the works of Thiers. But 
 in this line we need twelve, if they can be found. 
 The 'mute' e of empereur is the only one, evidently, 
 which cannot be pronounced, for according to the 
 usual pronunciation it belongs to those e's that ought 
 not to be written at all. Does it follow from that 
 that we are to let it drop out completely 1 ? Not a bit; 
 the ear must perceive a trace of it, if there is only a 
 half of a quarter of a 'mute' e. It will be enough, 
 even, to bear down and linger upon the preceding 
 syllable to make the ear realize that here is some- 
 thing like a half syllable. And no doubt this is diffi- 
 cult; but the others show no difficulty. The e's of 
 revenait should both be pronounced fully, and as 
 to the e in lentement, it can easily be made to sound 
 more than that in empereur. Doesn't the sense itself 
 require it*?" 1 
 
 "Now another verse, of a very different kind, 
 which cannot be rendered, either, in any manner that 
 happens first to offer itself: 
 
 'Je veux ce que je veux, parce que je le veux.' 
 
 The first element, je veux, should be followed by 
 a pause; the second element has four syllables, the 
 first and third ought to be pronounced, though in 
 ordinary usage they would not be heard. In the last 
 
 x Because lentement is appropriately heard with the slowness and 
 waiting suggested by "lenteument." 
 
 • 123.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 half of the verse the que must be stressed (and there- 
 fore prolonged) ; if it is not, all the 'mute' e's will 
 have to be sounded. 
 
 "In this other verse from Hugo, 
 
 'Mais ne me dis jamais qu<? j<? ne t'aime pas,' 
 
 which in rapidly spoken prose would contain only 
 eight syllables, all the 'mute' e's must be heard 
 except the last (in aime) ; and that one is to be felt 
 rather than heard, the prolongation of ai and of m 
 being enough to mark the existence 1 of the e follow- 
 ing." 
 
 Martinon's prescription for the reading of the 
 lines which he quotes presumes a great deal better 
 appreciation of the problem than a foreigner can be 
 asked to feel. To have cited it before our explana- 
 tion, would have been without effect; but coming at 
 the point where it has been introduced, it should be 
 comprehensible, and should serve as confirmation of 
 what has been asserted. Martinon, writing for his 
 countrymen, is brief; but his meaning is not different 
 from the meaning of the rather lengthy exposition 
 it has seemed necessary to offer to English-speaking 
 readers. 
 
 1 Martinon's idea that the existence of the e is "marked" by 
 the lengthening of the preceding syllable is not hostile to the 
 notion already stated, that this lengthening compensates for the 
 neglect of the e. It is hardly safe, however, to say that the pro- 
 longation of a syllable implies a "mute" e immediately follow- 
 ing it. 
 
 . 124.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 If non-French authority were needed on this topic, 
 Koschwitz, in Les Parlers Parisiens, page 89, com- 
 menting on the methods of an actor of the Comedie 
 Francaise well remembered by many of this genera- 
 tion, says, "Monsieur Got makes much of the ad- 
 vantage to be obtained from the pronunciation or 
 suppression of 'mute' e; the greater the emphasis 
 the more 'mute' e's must be sounded, and the 
 greater the familiarity of style the fewer should be 
 heard. In verse we should make them felt in some 
 way or other." 
 
 From what has been shown, and from the ex- 
 amples of the method of handling "mute" e in 
 present-day reading, it must be reasonably clear 
 that the general effect of French verse is very differ- 
 ent from the effect aimed at by the poets of the 
 Classic centuries. If this difference is not plain 
 enough, let us take some extract written in the early 
 part of the seventeenth century, and mark its sylla- 
 ble scheme as it undoubtedly was heard at the time 
 of its construction ; then let us indicate how the same 
 extract has to be read now in order to make it both 
 comprehensible and acceptable to French ears. In 
 The Cid, Corneille wrote (every "mute" e which 
 cannot be elided having the sound of eu, as indi- 
 cated by italic letters) : 
 
 Mais bientot, malgre nous, leurs princes les rallient. 
 Leur courage renait, et leurs terreurs s'oublient, 
 
 . 125.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 La honte de mourir sans avoir combattu 
 Arrets leur desordre, et leur rend leur vertu. 
 
 To-day we read the above lines with certain long 
 syllables and certain silent spaces. (Notice the long 
 or lengthened syllables, printed in bold face.) 
 
 Mais bientot, malgre nous, leurs princ'les ralli'. 
 Leur courag' renait, et leurs terreurs s'oubli', 
 La hont' de mourir sans avoir combattu 
 Arret' leur desordr', et leur rend leur vertu. 
 
 The difference between the two renderings is small; 
 but as time has gone on, the suppression of the sound 
 of "mute" e favoring a prolongation of the syllable 
 immediately preceding the silent vowel, French 
 poets have learned to profit by the presence of long 
 syllables, and to introduce them into their lines ac- 
 cording to a kind of plan. The result is something 
 which is a great relief from the click-clack of the 
 Classic verse, and which enables a verse-maker to 
 produce contrasts by means of quantity, and to im- 
 port into the language a slowness and a gravity that 
 its prose rarely exhibits. The transcriptions of read- 
 ing by Leconte de Lisle and Mme. Bartet demon- 
 strate the part played by quantity in modern verse. 
 In the following, the bold face type used for certain 
 syllables indicates, of course, no change of vowel 
 quality (as in can and cane in English), but is 
 intended to advise the reader to protract the syllable 
 
 . 126.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 bearing it to quite twice its ordinary prose length. 
 The only mark other than that of length is the itali- 
 cizing of such "mute" es as properly should be 
 given syllabic value. 
 
 LA VERANDAH 
 
 Au tintement de l'eau dans les porphyres roux 
 Les rosiers de l'lran melent leurs frais murmures, 
 Et les ramiers reveurs leur roucoulement doux, 
 Tandis que l'oiseau grele et \e frelon jaloux, 
 Sifflant et bourdonnant, mordent les figues mures, 
 Les rosiers de l'lran melent leurs frais murmures 
 Au tintement de l'eau dans les porphyn?s roux. 
 
 Sous les treillis d'argent de la verandah close 
 Dans l'air tiede, embaume de l'odeur des jasmins, 
 Ou la splendeur du jour darde une flech^ rose, 
 La Persan<? royale, immobile, repose, 
 Derriere son col brun croisant ses belles mains, 
 Dans l'air tiede, embaume de l'odeur des jasmins, 
 Sous les treillis d'argent de la verandah close. 
 
 Jusqu'aux levres que 1'ambre arrondi baise encor, 
 Du cristal d'ou s'echappe une vapeur subtile, 
 Qui monte en tourbillons legers et prend l'essor 
 Sur les coussins de soie, ecarlate aux fleurs d'or, 
 La branche du houka rode, comme un reptile, 
 Du cristal d'ou s'echappe une vapeur subtile, 
 Jusqu'aux levres qu<? l'ambre arrondi baise encor, 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 Leconte de Lisle. 
 • 127 •
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 La mer! et sur les flots toujours bleus, toujours calmes, 
 Jusqu'au sable roulant l'argent clair de leurs palmes, 
 
 Des voiles comme des oiseaux, 
 
 A la fois changeants et fideles, 
 
 Effleurent d'une blancheur d'ailes 
 
 La face tremblante des eaux ! 
 Mais, helas! sur ces bords, ou tristement ]e marche, 
 En vain j 'attends ton vol, 6 colombe de l'arche, 
 Messages d'espoir m'annonc.ant le retour! . . . 
 
 Six mois deja que, chaque jour, 
 Devant comme apres l'heure ou, dans \e crepuscule, 
 
 Palpit<? le voile des airs, 
 Que \e soleil se leve ou dans le ciel ircule, 
 Mes yeux fouillent en vain les horizons deserts. 
 
 Sourire de l'aube vermeille, 
 
 Adieu du soir eblouissant, 
 N'ont pour moi qu'une ombr«? pareille. 
 Tout m'est douleur quand je pense a l'absent! 
 
 From Griselidis, Act II, scene 3, as recited by Madame Bartet. 
 
 The two extracts present considerable contrast in 
 the number and regularity of occurrence of long 
 syllables. La Verandah is a lyric of great symmetry, 
 and is purposely dreamy. Its author was evidently 
 reading it with full appreciation of his own musical 
 intention. On the other hand, the actress recites with 
 an eye to natural expression, and yet manages to 
 maintain the effect of verse structure and to give it 
 all the quantitative relief that the dramatist's words 
 permit. 
 
 . 128 .
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Of somewhat weaker authority are the phonetic 
 transcriptions of verse by M. Paul Passy, because 
 he has a tendency to represent popular rather than 
 cultivated pronunciation; but even he recognizes the 
 long syllables wherever they occur, and seems vitally 
 appreciative of their value. In what is to follow, 
 long syllables will be marked as before, and "mute" 
 e's of syllabic sound will be italicized. No deviation 
 from M. Passy's indications will be found. 
 
 Ainsi, toujours pousses vers de nouveaux rivages, 
 Dans la nuit eternelle emportes sans retour, 
 Ne pourrons-nous jamais sur l'ocean des ages 
 Jeter l'ancre un seul jour? 
 
 O lac ! l'annee a peine a fini sa carriere, 
 Et pres des flots cheris qu'elle devait revoir, 
 Regarde ! je viens seul m'asseoir sur cette pierre 
 Ou tu la vis s'asseoir! 
 
 Tu mugissais ainsi sous ces roches profondes; 
 Ainsi tu te brisais sur leurs flancs dechires ; 
 Ainsi \e vent jetait l'ecume de tes ondes 
 Sur ses pieds adores. 
 
 O lac ! rochers muets ! grottes ! foret obscure ! 
 Vous que \e temps epargne ou qu'il peut rajeunir, 
 Gardez de cette nuit, gardez belle nature, 
 Au moins \e souvenir! 
 
 . 129.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Qu'il soit dans ton repos, qu'il soit dans tes orages, 
 Beau lac, et dans l'aspect de tes riants coteaux, 
 Et dans ces noirs sapins, et dans ces rocs sauvages 
 Qui pendent sur tes eaux ! 
 
 Qu'il soit dans \e zephyr qui fremit et qui passe, 
 Dans les bruits de tes bords par tes bords repetes, 
 Dans l'astre au front d'argent qui blanchit ta surface 
 De ses molles clartes. 
 
 Que \e vent qui gemit, \e roseau qui soupire, 
 Que les parfums legers de ton air embaume, 
 Que tout ce qu'on entend, Ton voit ou Ton respire, 
 Tout dise : ils ont aime ! 
 
 Lamartine. 
 
 The movement of Le Lac is such that, with the 
 exception of the long final syllable of most of the 
 lines, little use is made of length. M. Passy, too, is 
 more inclined to compensate for suppressed "mute" 
 e's by the use of "rests" than by prolonging syllables. 
 This is common enough in the reading of French 
 verse by people who give no especial attention to 
 its rhythm. It does very well for the poem quoted, 
 whose flow is too regular and too obvious to be 
 frustrated or concealed by the poorest reader likely 
 to attack it. The use of "rests" is not enough, how- 
 ever, for most cases. If the verse of the present time, 
 or that of the Romantic school, is to make its proper 
 impression, the prolongation of syllables is never a 
 
 .130.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 matter of indifference. The last full syllable of each 
 line that ends in "mute" e, and the syllable im- 
 mediately before the cesura are the most likely to 
 be long or susceptible of lengthening. Two things 
 operate in their prolongation, the natural duration 
 of a syllable just before a pause, and the increase of 
 length of most long and medium syllables when 
 stressed. Syllables are, however, evidently selected 
 for these positions with some reference to their in- 
 herent quantity. An example will make plainer what 
 is meant and will serve to give practice. 
 
 Let us take a familiar poem by Alfred de Musset, 
 as transcribed by Paul Passy, and let us follow 
 Passy's indications as to long syllables and "mute" 
 es. "Mute" e's which are not italicized are either 
 elided or silent. The italic letter will be used for e 
 syllabic, and a colon ( :) will show that the syllable 
 preceding it is prolonged. In some instances the colon 
 will be seen after a consonant because it is the con- 
 sonant, rather than the vowel, which gives length to 
 the syllable. The colon following n in such a word 
 as pensait {pen: sait) means of course, not that n is 
 long, but that the nasal sound in pen is lengthened. 
 In the stanzas below length is by no means always 
 compensation for a subsequent suppressed e. Some- 
 times it is due to natural or oratorical stress, par- 
 ticularly immediately before a pause of some 
 importance. 
 
 .131.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Elle etait bell : e, si la nuit 
 Qui do : rt dans la som : bre chapell : e 
 Ou Michel-An : ge a fait son lit, 
 Immobil : e peut etre bell : e. 
 
 Elle etait bonn : e, s'il suffit 
 
 Qu'en pa : ssant la main s'ou : vre et donn : e, 
 
 Sans que Dieu n'ait rien : vu, rien : dit, 
 
 Si l'o:r sans pitie fait l'aumonre. 
 
 Elle pen : sait, si le vain bruit 
 D'une voix douce et cadencee, 
 Comme \e ruisseau qui gemit, 
 Peut faire croi : re a la pensee. 
 
 Elle priait, si deux beaux yeux 
 Tan : tot s'attachant a la terre, 
 Tan : tot se levant vers les cieux, 
 Peuvent s'appeler la prie : re. 
 
 Elle aurait souri, si la fleu : r 
 Qui ne s'est poin : t epanouie, 
 Pouvait s'ouvri : r a la f raicheu : r, 
 Du vent qui pass : e et qui l'oublie. 
 
 Elle aurait pleu : re, si sa main, 
 Sur son cceu : r f roidement posee 
 Eut jamais dans l'argile humain 
 Senti la celeste rosee. 
 
 Elle aurait ai : me, si l'orgue : il 
 Parei : lie a la lam : pe inutil : e 
 Qu'on allume pres d'un cercue : il 
 N'eut veille sur son coeu:r steril : e. 
 
 .132.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Elle est morte et n'a poin : t vecu ; 
 Elle faisait semblant de vi : vre. 
 De sa main est tombe \e li : vre 
 Dans lequel elle n'a rien : lu. 
 
 At this point of the investigation it can hardly 
 fail to be seen that quantity, that is, syllable length, 
 plays a role in French versification. As said near the 
 beginning of this book, it cannot ever be the basis 
 of the rhythm, because of its uncertain character 
 and its variable occurrence ; but as one grows famil- 
 iar with the poetry of France between 1830 and the 
 present day, the effectiveness of the contrast between 
 short and long syllables becomes more and more 
 appreciated. No reader should be discouraged if at 
 first these long or prolonged units are not obvious; 
 in the Classic verse they need not be looked for very 
 often, and in later poetry it will be enough if the 
 line-end and the cesura are watched for probable 
 length. Gradually one learns to lengthen in order 
 to compensate for a "mute" e; and last of all, the 
 syllables that are naturally long get to be known. 
 For the benefit of the reader who has not given much 
 thought to the matter of quantity in his ordinary 
 pronunciation of French, here is a short list of 
 vowels and syllables that can safely be called 
 "long." For any particular word that is puzzling, 
 reference can quickly be made to the little Diction- 
 naire Phonctique of Michael is-Passy, published by 
 
 • 133-
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Carl Meyer, Hannover and Berlin, which can be 
 obtained from Hachette in London, or from the 
 book importers in New York. 
 
 (If we remember that any vowel that is set down 
 in what follows as being normally long becomes con- 
 siderably shorter when in an unemphasized position 
 and far from the end of a breath group, we shall 
 appreciate what is meant by the common statement 
 that there are three degrees of length for French 
 vowels. The long vowels to be noted are especially 
 long when stressed, and longest when terminating 
 a breath group.) 
 
 LONG VOWELS 
 
 1. In a final syllable, when a sounded consonant follows, 
 if the vowel sound is o or eu {close sound as in feu) or any 
 nasal vowel. 
 
 Examples : cote, meu\e, \ampt, sonde, smple, dense. 
 
 2. In a final syllable, any vowel sound followed by a 
 sounded r, v, s, z, j (g having the / sound) or i used as 
 semiconsonant. 
 
 Examples: ruse, \ourd, sort, soleil, tige, rouge, age, 
 seve, sosur, partz'r, \\umeur, ]our, alors, dorm^wse, 
 xir, m^r. 
 
 Note: The length affects the single vowel sound in 
 the case of a digraph, and the second element only 
 in the case of a diphthong, as {aire, leur, pour, auge, 
 etc., but vozr, lm're, voyage. 
 
 3. In a final syllable a and o are usually long before a 
 sounded consonant. 
 
 •134-
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Examples : ame, aumone, p^sse. 
 4. In a final syllable e and e are usually long, and ax 
 and ei having the same sound, before a sounded consonant. 
 Examples : tete, meme, bele, rane, peine, plazne. 
 
 One thing more should be said here, that is, that 
 few English-speaking readers of French are in any 
 danger of giving too much length to a long syllable 
 in the verse. The tendency of a foreigner is always 
 to pronounce with too little difference between the 
 short and the long vowels in French, and because 
 the language seems rapid in utterance, to make all 
 the vowels short. This error is not so harmful in 
 prose as in verse; for the movement of poetry is 
 comparatively slow, especially where the proportion 
 of possible long syllables followed by "mute" e's is 
 large. This point can hardly be too much empha- 
 sized for readers whose mother tongue is English; 
 and they should accustom themselves to yielding 
 to a deliberateness of prosodic march, particularly 
 in the lyrics of recent poets, which is very dif- 
 ferent from the previous conceptions of speakers 
 of English, and from the clipped enunciation of 
 cabaret singers and reciters of popular verse in 
 France. 
 
 Just as in the matter of stress accent, which 
 seemed to submit to no law in the versification, 
 quantity has its influence, but its rule eludes our 
 attempt to formulate it. In the two places where 
 
 •135-
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 stress is looked for the line not uncommonly is 
 furnished with a prolonged syllable, but not in the 
 majority of instances probably. On the other hand, 
 long syllables appear which are not the rhyme nor 
 the last unit before the cesura. Naturally they coin- 
 cide with stresses; but stressed syllables are not 
 always long. Like stress accents, long syllables and 
 syllables made long to compensate for "mute" e, 
 are invoked by the poets to bring about that har- 
 mony and correspondence between sense and sound, 
 which is so admirable, but which no analysis can 
 teach us to produce. Voltaire, who failed to write 
 great poetry or even superior verse, knew, however, 
 the value of the prolonged syllable to the French 
 prosodist. In one of his letters (1761) he writes to 
 Tovazzi, "You reproach us with our 'mute' e as a 
 sad and muffled sound that dies away in our mouths ; 
 but it is just in these e's that the great music of our 
 prose and our verse consists: empire, couronne, dia- 
 deme, flamme, tendresse, victoire, all these endings 
 leave in the ear a sound which lingers after the word, 
 like a harpsichord ringing after the fingers have left 
 the keys." 
 
 136
 
 IX. 
 MASCULINE AND FEMININE RHYMES 
 
 The quotation which closed the preceding 
 chapter is one of the best-known contributions to 
 the controversy over "mute" e, which has been going 
 on since the beginning of the eighteenth century. 
 It is probable that Voltaire had in mind principally 
 the effect of the vowel in those rhymes called femi- 
 nine, an effect whose existence has been denied by 
 many a critic of non-French origin, but which is 
 keenly felt by the French themselves. The distinc- 
 tion between masculine and feminine rhymes is not 
 only still recognized, but there is as much force as 
 ever there was in Malherbe's rule that rhymes of 
 the two kinds must be used in alternation. As the 
 terms masculine and feminine have special meaning 
 in French prosody, let us first explain them. Merely 
 because a final "mute" e is in the majority of nouns 
 and adjectives a mark of the feminine gender, all 
 rhymes having that termination are known as femi- 
 nine, regardless of the actual grammatical gender of 
 the words of which they form a part. Silence, re pete, 
 bataille, prelude,violette, temple, dpre, are all avail- 
 
 •137-
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 able for feminine rhymes; while beaute, peau, tantot, 
 du, art, viendrait, are samples of the masculine. It 
 should be easy now, after what has been said of 
 "mute" e in verse, for the reader to understand that 
 when the final e was distinctly heard, as it was by 
 Ronsard, silence being "sttenceu" and violette, "vio- 
 letteu" 1 every line ending in a feminine rhyme must 
 have been longer by one syllabic unit than any line 
 of masculine rhyme in the same measure. This 
 Alexandrine, 
 
 Dans la foule ou chacun en surgissant s'efface, 
 
 certainly gives thirteen syllables, and 
 
 Du meme pas ils ont poursuivi leurs chemins 
 
 gives only twelve. There could, therefore, at that 
 time be no question of the existence of some differ- 
 ence in sound between masculine-rhymed and femi- 
 nine-rhymed lines. And the same difference is to be 
 noted in our own day when the feminine rhyme is 
 due to a "mute" e which happens to be a supporting 
 vowel, as in temple or ombre, in which we have a 
 perfectly audible final "en." 
 
 Trois mots pour le peuple sans nombre, (9) 
 Qui tapisse au fond de son ombre (9) 
 
 Ses ravins, ses plaines, ses monts. (8) 
 
 1 See note, page 79. 
 
 .138.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 In the reading of their own productions by some 
 poets, and in that of many declaimers of lyrics, this 
 archaic tendency exists and the final e of feminine 
 rhymes is not infrequently heard, brief but unmis- 
 takable, although not a supporting vowel. How- 
 ever, this can hardly be considered anything but 
 an exceptional survival of a tradition, or the out- 
 come of a musical conception of verse, such as 
 Koschwitz shows in his transcription of the read- 
 ing of Sully-Prudhomme and Coppee. But in general 
 these final "mute" es have gradually disappeared 
 from the pronunciation, leaving their shadow in the 
 lengthening of a preceding syllable, a phenomenon 
 about which much has already been said in these 
 pages. Such lengthening probably could not have 
 been the characteristic of feminine rhymes which 
 caused the versifiers of Ronsard's period to feel their 
 difference from masculine line endings, nor of course 
 the characteristic that prompted first the practice, 
 and then the law, of alternating rhymes of different 
 genders. This prolongation is now, however, what 
 especially differentiates the feminine from the mas- 
 culine rhyme, and justifies the retention of the rule 
 of alternation. In the pronunciation of to-day the 
 masculine rhyme is brief, sharp, and terminated 
 suddenly. It is usually a vowel sound. The feminine 
 is long, gliding, and fades away. It is commonly a 
 vowel followed by a consonant sound. 
 
 •139-
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 The duty of the reader of French verse as regards 
 rhyme is to observe this modern distinction between 
 the sounds of so-called masculine and feminine 
 rhymes; and that is his whole task. Assuming a 
 fairly correct pronunciation on his part, nothing 
 more is demanded of him. But this much is impera- 
 tive; for the rhyme is not only the greatest beauty of 
 French verse, it has become so important to it as to 
 lead many discriminating people, French as well as 
 foreign, to assert that rhyme is the only indispensa- 
 ble feature of the whole system. Sainte-Beuve wrote: 
 
 Rime, qui donnes leurs sons 
 
 Aux chansons, 
 Rime, l'unique harmonie 
 Du vers, qui sans tes accents 
 
 Fremissants, 
 Serait muet au genie. 
 
 The Classic poets, though, declared that the rhyme 
 should be "the slave" of the verse maker and obey 
 him. As a matter of fact the rhyme never can be 
 made strictly obedient. The necessity of finding a 
 suitable word for the end of a particular line limits 
 the versifier materially, and very often determines, 
 in spite of all his efforts, the turn of meaning his 
 composition will take. The rhyme word is constantly 
 a surprise, not only to the reader, but to the rhymer 
 himself. It frequently compels him to introduce a 
 clause or even a whole verse, quite contrary to his 
 
 . 140.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 original intention, in order that he may arrive in 
 safety, so to speak, at his musical destination. Musi- 
 cal, we say, for the rhyme is the closest bond between 
 pure music and verse, that border region through 
 which one passes from ordinary speech to song. The 
 imperative demand for a word which shall fall at the 
 line's end, and itself contain a predetermined vowel 
 followed by a predetermined consonant, can readily 
 be admitted to bring forth many an unexpected 
 clause or word. But it is not our intention to discuss 
 the role of rhyme in poetry. Nothing that could be 
 said on the subject would apply more exactly to 
 French than to our own language. We know in 
 English the power of rhymes in the general tone or 
 color of a poetic composition. Some rhymes give 
 dignity, and some bring comic effect; some seem 
 compelled by the thought, while others are evidently 
 the result of the versifier's ingenuity; others are 
 purposely fantastic or harsh. Some are strength-giv- 
 ing, and some are full of gentleness. If in French 
 rhyme has the same poetic office as in English, it 
 performs its functions no doubt more easily, that is, 
 it must be more under the control of the poet, be- 
 cause in French the great number of terminations 
 that are identical in sound renders the choice of the 
 right word less difficult than in our language. Be- 
 sides, it will be noticed in reading French verse that 
 the assortment of rhymes from which a selection can 
 
 . 141 •
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 be made is much enlarged by the liberty of rhyming 
 two forms that are spelled and pronounced alike, but 
 which are not considered to be the same word. Pas, 
 meaning a step, rhymes with pas, the particle used 
 in expressing negation: nue, naked, is coupled cor- 
 rectly with nue, the poetic word for cloud, le reste 
 is a rhyme for il reste. 
 
 With this freedom of use the French versifiers 
 have been, and are sometimes now, fond of com- 
 plication in rhyming. The reader has no reason to 
 pay special attention to any aspect of such juggling; 
 and we leave him to investigate for himself, if he 
 cares to do so, rime double, rime equivoque, rime 
 brisee, rime couronnee, rime gra?nmaticale, rime en 
 echo, with other forms of rhyme, many of which 
 have not survived the Middle Ages. Our attention 
 must go back to rhyme merely as a phenomenon of 
 rhythm, and a component of verse. 
 
 Why could the Classic school treat the rhyme as a 
 "slave," and yet Sainte Beuve, the Romantic critic, 
 and himself a poet, call it the "sole harmony of 
 verse'"? Evidently, allowing for a little exaggera- 
 tion in each expression, because the importance and 
 power of rhyme had enormously advanced in the 
 lapse of the centuries, and especially during the 
 development of the Romantic movement in French 
 poetry. The Classic poets were content in general 
 with merely correct rhymes, though it must be ad- 
 
 . 142 .
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 mitted that there was a vast difference in the effect of 
 them whether handled by the delicate poet Racine, 
 or by Voltaire, who was merely a versifying wit. 
 The Romantic poets sought more striking rhymes, 
 and, as the years went on after 1830, resorted to 
 rich rhyme, in which not only the consonant follow- 
 ing the rhyming vowel is identical in sound, but 
 also the consonant immediately preceding it. The 
 late Romanticists, commonly known as Parnassians, 
 by whom the prosodic theories of the school were 
 carried to extremes, used rich rhyme in preference 
 to the simpler sort, rime suffisante, where only the 
 vowel and its succeeding consonant sound, if there 
 is one, are repeated. Theodore de Banville, whose 
 Petit Traite de Poesie Frangaise (1872) is taken 
 as the official expression of the prosody of the 
 period, reiterates Sainte Beuve's saying that rhyme is 
 "Vunique harmonie des vers," and asserts on his own 
 account that no rhyme is rightly so named unless 
 it be rich. "Without the sustaining consonant," he 
 writes, "no rhyme, and consequently no poetry." 
 Hugo, though favoring the rich rhyme, never sought 
 it with half the diligence used by his less inspired 
 followers; and as one goes back in the nineteenth 
 century, through de Musset and Lamartine, one 
 sees fewer instances of this capricious, hard-to- 
 govern "slave" of the poet, the effort to obtain 
 which led the Parnassians to resort to so much 
 
 • H3 •
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 padding and so many meaningless lines. It was, like 
 everything else tried by the Romanticists, merely an 
 expedient known to the Classic versifiers, but ridden 
 to death by a group of men who professed that they 
 had concentrated all poetry in the rhyme. This 
 excess of attention given to rhyming does not, how- 
 ever, preclude the fact that in the middle of the 
 nineteenth century rhyme had actually become a 
 great deal more important than it had ever been 
 before since the beginning of the seventeenth, so 
 important that we may say that it has to a great 
 degree usurped the function of the line-end pause, 
 and now not only serves to announce that pause, but 
 is itself the thing which the ear expects when the 
 required number of syllables, or their equivalents, 
 have run by. With the evolution in pronunciation, 
 by which so many "mute" e's must be represented 
 by rests, i.e., spaces without sound, or by the pro- 
 longation of a preceding syllable, the number of 
 pauses in a line considerably exceeds that exacted 
 by the logical grouping of words. Besides this, the 
 freer cesura, favored by Hugo and practically all 
 his disciples down to the end of the Parnassians, 
 has rendered the verse in French less regular in its 
 march and has thereby concealed in great measure 
 the true basic principle, to which we have given 
 already too much space to need to devote more to 
 it at this point. Pauses coming at unprescribed places 
 
 .144.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 in the line inevitably detract from the distinctness 
 and force of the pause at the line end. Again, the 
 tendency to pronounce as diphthongs ia, ie, io, iu, 
 iou, ua, ue, uo, oua, oui, etc., in combinations to 
 each of which the versifier, following his rules, has 
 ascribed two syllables, must at least aid in obscur- 
 ing the syllabic count. Hence, while we can never 
 abandon the theory of the syllabic basis of French 
 verse, it certainly appears as if, with the change in 
 pronunciation, there had come an unconscious shift- 
 ing of the basis from one of pauses separated by 
 exact numbers of syllables, to one of rhymes falling 
 at stated intervals of time, in the determination of 
 which intervals the syllable acts like the swing of 
 the pendulum or the tick of a clock or metronome. 
 The versifier still calculates in syllabic units, and the 
 reader, or reciter, who observes as he should the 
 verse movement, accepts the calculation by recog- 
 nizing, at least mentally, each syllable. But it is the 
 rhyme now that seems to govern rather than to 
 serve, and to be of greater authority than the line- 
 end pause, which it once only announced and em- 
 phasized. The reader may judge for himself how 
 necessary it is to the rhythm of short lines to have 
 the rhymes firmly marked by the voice, when the 
 Romantic irregularity of cesura appears to the 
 extent we find in these stanzas from Hugo's Chan- 
 sons des Rues et des Bois: 
 
 .145.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Viens, | loin des catastrophes, 
 Meier, j sous nos berceaux, 
 Le frisson | de tes strophes 
 Au tremblement | des eaux. 
 
 Viens, | l'etang solitaire 
 Est un poeme | aussi. 
 Les lacs | ont le mystere, 
 Nos coeurs ont | le souci. 
 
 Tout comme l'hirondelle, 
 La stanc|e quelquefois 
 Aime a mouiller son aile 
 Dans la mar|e des bois. 
 
 Not only is the cesura here highly variable in posi- 
 tion, but in the last three lines it falls twice in the 
 body of a word (in stance and mare), something of 
 which no example has, so far, been pointed out in 
 these pages, but which can very properly occur when 
 "mute" e fades to silence and the preceding stressed 
 syllable is prolonged. It will be noticed also that 
 catastrophes and strophes, solitaire and mystere, 
 aussi and souci, are rich rhymes. Berceaux and des 
 eaux are practically rich, if not technically so. 
 
 In the quatrains that follow, the rhythm, broken 
 by many sudden shocks and dramatic jolts, is beauti- 
 fully restored and maintained by the rich rhymes, 
 all the rhymes being of that class, except one pair. 
 
 Je t'ai quelque temps tenu la. 
 Fuis ! — Devant toi, les etendues 
 
 • 146 .
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Que ton pied souvent viola 
 Tremblent, et s'ouvrent, eperdues. 
 
 Redeviens ton maitre, va-t-en/ 
 Cabre-toi, piaffe, redtploie 
 Tes farouches ailes, Titan, 
 Avec la fureur de la joie. 
 
 Retourne aux pales proiondeurs, 
 Sois indomptable, recommence, 
 Vers l'ideal, loin des Wideurs, 
 Loin des hommes, ta fuite immense. 
 
 If the endeavor to show the rhyme as master of 
 Romantic verse, and as tending in a great degree to 
 lead to a new rhythm basis, has seemed to indicate 
 that rhyme is to be considered not only indispensable 
 to the basic rhythm, but capable of affording a 
 rhythm of its own, the conclusion is plain. Rhyme is 
 never to be ignored or hurried over in any French 
 verse; for even in the most rigidly syllabic of 
 Classic lines, where it would appear almost super- 
 fluous as contributing to the comprehension of the 
 measure, it adds a rhythm of its own through a 
 musical effect inherent in its nature. 
 
 No one who has thought about the matter will 
 deny that several rhythms may exist together. How 
 many, it would be presumptuous to try to decide in 
 such a sketch as this; but besides a principal series 
 in rhythms both visual and auditive, there are com- 
 monly minor series distinctly recognizable. So simple 
 
 • H7-
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 a thing as a stretch of wall paper shows coexistent 
 rhythms, which supplement, but do not conceal, each 
 other. But there is no necessity of dwelling on the 
 analogy between rhythms as seen and as heard. 
 Long ago reference was made in these pages to the 
 stress rhythms which accompany the basic rhythm 
 of French verse. It has also been seen that long 
 syllables may be introduced so as to contrast with 
 short ones, and establish another rhythm, inde- 
 pendent but subordinate, through a certain regu- 
 larity of occurrence of the long syllable. This regu- 
 larity is greatest in the alternation of feminine 
 rhymes with the generally shorter masculine termi- 
 nations. Yet it often attains high rhythmic effect 
 elsewhere, as in lines like these of Leconte de Lisle. 
 For the guidance of the reader each syllable that is 
 long by nature or that becomes long to compensate 
 for the suppression of a "mute" e is printed in bold 
 face. 
 
 NOX 
 
 Sur la pente des monts les brises apaisees 
 Inclinent au sommeil les arbres onduleux; 
 L'oiseau silencieux s'endort dans les rosees, 
 Et l'etoile a dore l'ecume des flots bleus. 
 
 Au contour des ravins, sur les hauteurs sauvages, 
 Une molle vapeur efface les chemins ; 
 La lune tristement baigne les noirs feuillages ; 
 L'oreille n'entend plus les murmures humains. 
 
 . 148.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Mais sur le sable au loin chante la mer divine, 
 Et des hautes forets gemit la grande voix, 
 Et l'air sonore, aux cieux que la nuit illumine, 
 Porte le chant des mers et le soupir des bois. 
 
 Montez, saintes rumeurs, paroles surhumaines, 
 Entretien lent et doux de la terre et du ciel ! 
 Montez, et demandez aux etoiles sereines 
 S'il est pour les atteindre un chemin eternel. 
 
 O mers, 6 bois songeurs, voix pieuses du monde, 
 Vous m'avez repondu durant mes jours mauvais, 
 Vous avez apaise ma tristesse infeconde, 
 Et dans mon cceur aussi vous chantez a jamais! 
 
 Baudelaire, perhaps without conscious purpose in 
 his use of long syllables, shows what can be accom- 
 plished with them, in this sonnet. 
 
 LA MORT DES PAUVRES 
 
 C'est la Mort qui console, helas ! et qui fait vivre ; 
 C'est le but de la vie, et c'est le seul espoir 
 Qui, comme un elixir, nous monte et nous enivre, 
 Et nous donne le cceur de marcher jusqu'au soir ; 
 
 A travers la tempete, et la neige, et le givre, 
 C'est la clarte vibrante a notre horizon noir ; 
 C'est l'auberge fameuse inscrite sur le livre, 
 Ou Ton pourra manger, et dormir, et s'asseoir ; 
 
 C'est un Ange qui tient dans ses doigts magnetiques 
 Le sommeil et le don des reves extatiques, 
 Et qui refait le lit des gens pauvres et nus ; 
 
 .149.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 C'est la gloire des Dieux, c'est le grenier mystique, 
 C'est la bourse du pauvre et sa patrie antique, 
 C'est le portique ouvert sur les cieux inconnus ! 
 
 It should be explained that the words, magne- 
 tiques, extatiques, mystique, and antique, in the 
 above, do not in general show length in the vowel i. 
 The prolongation of the syllables containing it is 
 not very considerable here, and is due to their posi- 
 tion at the line end, as well as to the nearly silent 
 final e and its usual slowing effect in the feminine 
 rhyme. Perhaps noir and asseoir, espoir and soir, 
 would not offer noticeable length if they were not 
 placed just before pauses of importance. In mort, 
 helas, vivre, elixir, monte, enivre, tempete, neige, 
 givre, vibrante, we find syllables long by nature, 
 and susceptible of being made longer if such treat- 
 ment helps the effect. 
 
 150
 
 X. 
 
 RHYME DESIGN 
 
 Now there enters the consideration of rhyme 
 series and of the advantage to the reader of a clear 
 appreciation of their presence in long successions 
 of lines. 
 
 The first rhymes appearing in what can be de- 
 nominated French, as distinguished from late Latin 
 or the general Romance tongue, were vowel rhymes 
 only. These are now called assonances : and although 
 they exist yet, in such cases as ne and bonte, vola 
 and compta, non and bon, they no longer satisfy the 
 ear unless the vowel is the final sound of the line. 
 Even on that condition they are not so acceptable as 
 when the consonants immediately preceding the 
 vowel are identical. But the older chansons de gestes 
 knew only assonance, as in this from the Song of 
 Roland: 
 
 Quant Rodlanz veit que bataille scrat, 
 Plus se fait fiers que lions ne lieparz; 
 Franceis escridet, Olivier apelat: 
 "Sire compaing, amis nel dire ]a. 
 Li emperedre qui ca enz nos laissat 
 
 . 151 .
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Itels vint milie en mist ad une part 
 Son escientre nen i out un codart. 
 Por son seignor deit om sofrir granz mals, 
 Ed endurer e forz freiz e granz chalz, 
 Sin deit om perdre del sane e de la charn. 
 Fier de ta lance, e jo de Durendal, 
 Ma bone espede que li reis me donat; 
 Se jo i muir, dire puet qui l'avrat : 
 Iceste espede fut a noble vassal !" 
 
 The vowel, as seen above, is the whole rhyme, and 
 the continuation of the same terminal vowel sound 
 for so long a time without change seems to indicate 
 that the forerunners of modern French poets, and 
 their hearers, were not very hard to please. Evi- 
 dently, also, they could not have been as sensitive as 
 we to the effect of consonants. As these chansons 
 were no doubt sung or intoned, with simple instru- 
 mental accompaniment, assonances formed a sort 
 of ornament to the verse, rather than a component 
 part of it such as rhyme became when it began to 
 serve not only to mark the measure, but also to 
 furnish a music of its own. The music of rhyme, 
 though commonly mentioned, is not commonly un- 
 derstood. The expression passes among us like a 
 multitude of other phrases which we have never 
 investigated, and it probably seems well enough 
 fitted for naming a vague and intangible thing. 
 There is, however, perfect correctness in the term 
 and no vagueness in the thing to which it is applied. 
 
 . 152.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Every vowel is identified by something which most 
 of us can describe in an unscientific way as its indi- 
 vidual pitch. We say that e in scene is "sharper" 
 than e in there, that is, more acute or higher. The 
 higher a note sounded on any instrument the more 
 we are inclined to employ "eeeee" to imitate or 
 caricature it. For sounds low in the scale we use o 
 and oo. These natural expedients are not resorted to 
 without reason. There really is in every vowel of 
 human speech a characteristic note quite inde- 
 pendent of the pitch of the vowel as given it by the 
 larynx, whence its sound comes. If we sing or say 
 rue, row, raw, rah, ray, ree, carefully keeping the 
 voice from changing pitch from start to finish, there 
 is not only no difficulty in recognizing the six vowel 
 sounds as distinct one from another, but we shall 
 hear something in ree which reminds us of a note 
 much higher in the musical scale than the some- 
 thing heard in rue. This is not a mere impression, 
 nor the result of association of ideas; there really is 
 in ee a high note added to the fundamental tone of 
 the vowel, and this note has been contributed by the 
 vibration of air in the mouth cavity of the speaker. 
 Practically no musical sound that we know is simple, 
 but consists of a main sound accompanied by a few, 
 or even many, others. Every instrument in the 
 orchestra has its peculiar and recognizable quality, 
 which is due to the number of lesser sounds that 
 
 •153-
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 mingle with its main tone product, or to the special 
 prominence of one or more of them. Such important 
 but subordinate sounds are called "partials," and it 
 is not necessary to enter here into an explanation of 
 their causes. One very common origin is the vibra- 
 tion of air in the hollows of the instrument produc- 
 ing the sound, and for that reason the size and shape 
 of these cavities, as well as the nature of the wood, 
 metal, varnish, ivory, etc., used by instrument 
 makers, have been a study of greatest interest. Now, 
 the human speech apparatus gets its main tone from 
 a column of air which the larynx sets to vibrating, 
 and we deliberately modify the size and form of 
 the mouth cavity, through which the vibrating air 
 must pass. The "partials" which we thus are able 
 to contribute give our tone the indefinable quality 
 which makes it an e or an o or an a, quite apart from 
 that tone's musical pitch or its resonance. This is 
 not the whole story, of course, but it is enough of 
 it to show that what we hear in e which differs from 
 what we hear in o is truly a note in the scale. It 
 seems miraculous that an ear should be a fine enough 
 organism to appreciate the infinitesimal differences 
 that make the distinction between vowels, yet we 
 need only the slightest intensity of the sound to 
 know one vowel from another. They are recogniz- 
 able even when whispered. 
 
 In rhymes, then, we have in the identity of the 
 
 .154.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 vowels an identity of musical notes. And there is, 
 moreover, the consonant identity after the vowel, 
 or both before and after it, an identity of great 
 value, as is plainly proved by the superiority of 
 rhyme over mere assonance. This added effect of the 
 rhyme consonant is due to something characteristic 
 in the consonant itself, which terminates the vibra- 
 tions of the vowel note, and in rich rhyme inaugu- 
 rates them also. In reve and leve there is the frica- 
 tive quality of the v. In meme and seme we hear the 
 nasal sound of m. In si mule and console the so-called 
 liquid, but in fact partly vowel note of / turns into 
 the pure vowel e. Such accompaniments of the vowel 
 tone are quite analogous to the character of the 
 attack and finish of the note, which is peculiar to 
 each instrument of an orchestra. Besides the quality 
 derived from the partials, or harmonics, there is the 
 blow, the snap, the buzz, the splutter, which mark 
 unmistakably the product of a drum, a guitar, a bass 
 viol, a trombone, and the like, and which affect us 
 as consonants. These things are truly the consonants 
 of music. They have a part to play in rhyme, though 
 no more important of course in French than in other 
 languages. Having referred to their effect, we shall 
 not try to enter into a discussion of the principles 
 underlying it, but must direct attention to the 
 rhythm pattern which can be traced by rhyme re- 
 currences. And at this point there is no question of 
 
 .155.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 stanzas, but merely of a continuity of verses of 
 uniform measure grouped by their rhymes. The cele- 
 brated Nuit de Mai, by Alfred de Musset, shows 
 a good instance of what is meant. It should not be 
 inspected and the rhyme arrangement simply noted. 
 It must be read aloud, with due emphasis on the 
 rhymes, as well as proper care as to its thought. 
 With the guidance of some brackets on the left of 
 the text, the design, as compelled by the rhyme 
 scheme, can be better detected. Notice how this de- 
 sign groups the verses so as to make the expression 
 of the thought complete in each section and how 
 the deeper toned vowels, in Dieu, douleur, sanglots, 
 eaux, kideux, deux, horreur, are used to bring to a 
 termination each division of a great series of lines, 
 which, to the eye, is indivisible. Notice, too, the 
 variety of rhyme arrangement in the different sec- 
 tions. The musical effect is beautiful, and the larger 
 rhythm constructed by rhymes renders the move- 
 ment of a great number of verses of equal length 
 much more interesting than it could be under any 
 one system reiterated. Compare, for instance, this 
 scheme with that of a tirade written by Racine with 
 "rimes plates." 
 
 Crois-tu done que je sois comme le vent d'automne, 
 Qui se nourrit de pleurs jusque sur un tombeau, 
 Et pour qui la douleur n'est qu'une goutte d'eau? 
 .0 poete! un baiser, e'est moi qui te le donne. 
 
 • 156.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 [ L'herbe que je voulais arracher de ce lieu, 
 I C'est ton oisivete ; ta douleur est a Dieu. 
 r Quel que soit le souci que ta jeunesse endure, 
 Laisse-la s'elargir, cette sainte blessure 
 Que les noirs seraphins t'ont faite au fond du coeur ; 
 Rien ne nous rend si grands qu'une grande douleur. 
 Mais, pour en etre atteint, ne crois pas, 6 poete, 
 Oue ta voix ici-bas doive rester muette. 
 Les plus desesperes sont les chants les plus beaux, 
 Et j'en sais d'immortels qui sont de purs sanglots. 
 Lorsque le pelican, lasse d'un long voyage, 
 Dans les brouillards du soir retourne a ses roseaux, 
 Ses petits affames courent sur le rivage 
 En le voyant au loin s'abattre sur les eaux. 
 Deja, croyant saisir et partager leur proie, 
 lis courent a leur pere avec des cris de joie 
 En secouant leurs bees sur leurs goitres hideux. 
 Lui, gagnant a pas lents une roche elevee, 
 De son aile pendante abritant sa couvee, 
 Pecheur melancolique, il regarde les cieux. 
 Le sang coule a longs nots de sa poitrine ouverte ; 
 En vain il a des mers fouille la profondeur : 
 L'Ocean etait vide et la plage deserte ; 
 Pour toute nourriture il apporte son cceur. 
 Sombre et silencieux, etendu sur la pierre, 
 Partageant a ses fils ses entrailles de pere, 
 Dans son amour sublime il berce sa douleur, 
 Et, regardant couler sa sanglante mamelle, 
 Sur son festin de mort il s'affaisse et chancelle, 
 Ivre de volupte, de tendresse et d'horreur. 
 
 No long succession of French verses, especially in 
 the Romantic poetry, should be read without some 
 
 .157.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 effort to comprehend rhyme grouping. Such rhythm 
 is accomplished by "rimes melees" (mixed rhymes) 
 and is of course not common. In the so-called fixed 
 forms, of which the sonnet is probably best known, 
 everyone is familiar with the definite patterns traced 
 by the rhyme. A common French sonnet design is 
 this: 
 
 11 faut, dans ce bas monde, aimer beaucoup de choses, 
 Pour savoir, apres tout, ce qu'on aime le mieux : 
 Les bonbons, l'Ocean, le jeu, l'azur des cieux, 
 Les femmes, les chevaux, les lauriers et les roses. 
 
 II faut fouler aux pieds des fleurs a peine ecloses ; 
 II faut beaucoup pleurer, dire beaucoup d'adieux. 
 Puis le cceur s'aperqoit qu'il est devenu vieux, 
 Et l'effet qui s'en va nous decouvre les causes. 
 
 De ces biens passagers que Ton goute a demi, 
 Le meilleur qui nous reste est un ancien ami. 
 On se brouille, on se fuit. — Qu'un hasard nous rassemble, 
 
 On s'approche, on sourit, la main touche la main, 
 
 Et nous nous souvenons que nous marchions ensemble, 
 
 Que l'ame est immortelle, et qu'hier c'est demain. 
 
 The scheme of rhymes is, abba, abba, ccd, ede. 
 
 Following the dictates of the rhyming, this series 
 of verses has been printed in stanzas; and it is the 
 stanza which we must now notice as offering an 
 additional rhythm in the combination of rhythms 
 
 . 158.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 that may characterize lyric poetry in French. By 
 one of their conventions writers of non-lyric French 
 verse are restricted throughout a poem to a single 
 kind of line and to one system of rhyme arrange- 
 ment. In the lyrics, however, the poem is cut up into 
 sections consisting of groups presenting certain dis- 
 positions of meters and rhymes. The extract from 
 La Nuit de Mai shows this grouping in an irregu- 
 lar, if very charming form. The sonnet exemplifies 
 a regularity that is complete, as do also the other 
 fixed forms, — rondeau, ballade, triolet, villanelle, 
 and the less usual models. Between these two ex- 
 tremes is found the great body of French lyrics with 
 stanzas or, to employ another term, strophes. 
 
 If the following poems are read with careful atten- 
 tion to the rhyme arrangement, and to the pauses 
 which are naturally induced by the separation of 
 the sections as printed, it will be seen, or rather felt, 
 that beyond and outside of all the phenomena of 
 rhythm which have been already pointed out there 
 is a great design stamped upon each poem as a 
 whole. 
 
 Temps futurs ! vision sublime ! 
 Les peuples sont hors de l'abime. 
 Le desert morne est traverse. 
 Apres les sables, la pelouse ; 
 Et la terre est comme une epouse, 
 Et l'homme est comme un fiance ! 
 
 .159.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Oh ! voyez ! la nuit se dissipe. 
 Sur le monde qui s'emancipe, 
 Oubliant Cesars et Capets, 
 Et sur les nations nubiles, 
 S'ouvrent dans l'azur, immobiles, 
 Les vastes ailes de la paix ! 
 
 O libre France enfin surgie ! 
 O robe blanche apres l'orgie ! 
 O triomphe apres les douleurs! 
 Le travail bruit dans les forges, 
 Le ciel rit, et les rouges-gorges 
 Chantent dans l'aubepine en fleurs! 
 
 Les rancunes sont effacees ; 
 
 Tous les coeurs, toutes les pensees, 
 
 Qu'anime le meme dessin 
 
 Ne font plus qu'un faisceau superbe. 
 
 Dieu prend pour lier cette gerbe 
 
 La vieille corde du tocsin. 
 
 Au fond des cieux un point scintille. 
 Regardez, il grandit, il brille, 
 II approche, enorme et vermeil. 
 O Republique universelle, 
 Tu n'es encor que l'etincelle, 
 Demain tu seras le soleil. 
 
 Hugo. 
 
 Toi que j'ai recueilli sur sa bouche expirante 
 Avec son dernier souffle et son dernier adieu, 
 Symbole deux fois saint, don d'une main mourante, 
 Image de mon Dieu ; 
 
 . 160.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Que de pleurs ont coule sur tes pieds que j 'adore, 
 Depuis l'heure sacree ou, du sein d'un martyr, 
 Dans mes tremblantes mains tu passas, tiede encore 
 De son dernier soupir ! 
 
 Les saints flambeaux jetaient une derniere flamme; 
 Le pretre murmurait ces doux chants de la mort, 
 Pareils aux chants plaintifs que murmure une femme 
 A l'enfant qui s'endort. 
 
 De son pieux espoir son front gardait la trace, 
 Et sur ses traits, frappes d'une auguste beaute, 
 La douleur fugitive avait empreint sa grace, 
 La mort sa majeste. 
 
 Lamar tine. 
 
 Le ciel est, par-dessus le toit, 
 
 Si bleu, si calme ! 
 Un arbre, par-dessus le toit, 
 
 Berce sa palme. 
 
 La cloche, dans le ciel qu'on voit, 
 
 Doucement tinte. 
 Un oiseau sur l'arbre qu'on voit 
 
 Chante sa plainte. 
 
 Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, la vie est la, 
 
 Simple et tranquille. 
 Cette paisible rumeur-la. 
 
 Vient de la ville. 
 
 — Qu'as-tu fait, 6 toi que voila 
 
 Pleurant sans cesse, 
 Dis, qu'as-tu fait, toi que voila, 
 De ta jeunesse? 
 
 Verlaine. 
 • l6l •
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 S'il est un charmant gazon 
 
 Que le ciel arrose, 
 Ou brille en toute saison 
 
 Quelque fleur eclose, 
 Ou Ton cueille a pleine main 
 Lys, chevrefeuille et jasmin, 
 J'en veux faire le chemin 
 Ou ton pied se pose. 
 
 S'il est un sein bien aimant 
 
 Dont l'honneur dispose, 
 Dont le ferme devouement 
 N'ait rien de morose, 
 Si tou jours ce noble sein 
 Bat pour un digne dessein, 
 J'en veux faire le coussin 
 Ou ton front se pose ! 
 
 S'il est un reve d'amour 
 
 Parfume de rose, 
 Ou Ton trouve chaque jour 
 Quelque douce chose, 
 Un reve que Dieu benit, 
 Ou l'ame a l'ame s'unit, 
 Oh! j'en veux faire le nid 
 Ou ton cceur se pose. 
 
 Hugo. 
 
 Of course no merely mechanical division of a poem, 
 by breaking it into parts, will produce true stanzas. 
 There must be some relation between these sections 
 and the real grouping of the poet's thought. In the 
 preceding extracts this relation can easily be de- 
 
 . 162.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 tected on inspection. But for a reader who under- 
 stands them properly the relation is not brought 
 out by any analysis; it is something inevitable and 
 inherent. 
 
 We perceive, then, that to get the full enjoyment 
 of the sound of a lyric we should think of it as a 
 great design containing the small design of which 
 so much explanation has been given in the pages of 
 this essay. The small design is made up, first, of the 
 line (with its carefully counted syllables, its pauses, 
 its stress-accents, and its more or less strict recur- 
 rence of long syllables) ; secondly in that line's com- 
 pletion by the pause and the rhyme (the first making 
 the fundamental formal division and the second 
 linking in sound line with line). The great design 
 is one of groups. It sets apart group from group by 
 pauses of real import, and enables us to feel the 
 beauty and completeness of each section, while it 
 offers us the whole as a supreme series, a rhythm 
 of rhythms. The stanzas are the columns of a peri- 
 style, each ornate and showing completeness of 
 pattern. The poem in strophes is the colonnade itself, 
 the pillar-rhythm, of the temple portico or cathedral 
 aisle. 
 
 If this aspect of a poem in strophes were not as 
 obvious in English as in French, more might profit- 
 ably be said about it. There is, however, no need to 
 insist upon it farther. Let the reader of French 
 
 • 163.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 verse think of the greater design as well as of the 
 less, and his pleasure in lyrics will grow with his 
 appreciation of their sound and sense forms. 
 
 There can be, in French, stanzas known as iso- 
 metric, containing lines of but one length; and there 
 can be stanzas of lines made of different numbers of 
 syllables, — heterometric stanzas. The variety af- 
 forded by change is an additional source of pleasure 
 to the reader who hears as he reads. In some of the 
 longer lyrics the stanza model changes in the course 
 of the poem; but here, again, we are dealing with 
 something that is common to all modern languages 
 in which versification exists, and therefore no discus- 
 sion of it is necessary. The origin and evolution of 
 the French stanza forms are an interesting study, 
 but that study has little bearing on our enjoyment 
 of a lyric constructed of these evolved forms. For 
 the maker of verse in French there are, or rather 
 were, rules as to the running of the thought on from 
 one strophe to the next, so as to preclude sometimes 
 the normal intervening pause ; and for him there was 
 once a prescription to supply an opportunity for an 
 inner pause, which bore the relation to the strophe 
 that the cesura bears to the line. And other complica- 
 tions might be mentioned. The reader, however, can 
 be ignorant of all this, except as logical punctuation 
 forces it upon his notice. As an example, a couple of 
 strophes from J. B. Rousseau's Ode a la Fortune 
 
 . 164.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 exhibit extreme rigidity of arrangement within the 
 stanzas. It is maintained with almost absolute pre- 
 cision throughout the poem, the groups correspond- 
 ing to the expression of the thought being as invari- 
 able as the recurrence of the rhymes, and giving 
 pauses in the same places in each stanza. Since the 
 beginning of the Romantic movement this rather 
 artificial regularity has disappeared, and a ten-line 
 strophe will not offer, as these eighteenth-century 
 strophes do, an inevitable pause after the fourth 
 line and another after the seventh. Much less will 
 shorter stanzas now show marked breaks at pre- 
 scribed points, for instance, after the second line of 
 five, or the third line of six. The running of the 
 thought over from one strophe to the next is, how- 
 ever, rare for good reasons. 
 
 Fortune dont la main couronne 
 Les forfaits les plus inoui's, 
 Du faux eclat qui t'environne 
 Serons-nous toujours eblouis*? | 
 Jusques a quand, trompeuse idole, 
 D'un culte honteux et frivole 
 Honorerons-nous tes autels? || 
 Verra-t-on toujours tes caprices 
 Consacres par les sacrifices 
 Et par rhommage des mortels'? 
 
 Apprends que la seule sagesse 
 Peut faire les heros parfaits, 
 Qu'elle voit toute la bassesse 
 
 . 165.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 De ceux que ta faveur a f aits ; | 
 Qu'elle n'adopte point la gloire 
 Qui nait d'une injuste victoire 
 Que le sort remporte pour eux; | 
 Et que, devant ses yeux stoi'ques, 
 Leurs vertus les plus heroiques 
 Ne sont que des crimes heureux. 
 
 . 166.
 
 XL 
 OVERFLOW 
 
 The mention of irregularity in the position 
 of interior pauses in Romantic strophes, or indeed 
 the absence of such pauses, recalls the question of 
 the varied place of the Romantic cesura and the 
 consequent relief from monotony produced by the 
 variation. To the reader neither of these features of 
 Romantic verse needs present more than slight 
 difficulty, the rhyme being a dependence to preserve 
 or restore the rhythm pattern. 
 
 A harder thing for the foreign reader of French 
 verse to manage is what is known as enjambement, 
 i.e., literally, "striding over." This is merely over- 
 flow, the running of a clause from one line into the 
 next, which can take place when the end of a 
 thought group, or the syntactical division, does not 
 coincide with the line end. Here is a case: 
 
 C'est ainsi qu'achevait l'aveugle en soupirant, 
 
 Et pres du bois marchait, faible, et sur une pierre 
 
 S'asseyait . . . 
 
 In the lines shorter than ten syllables this condition 
 is to be found in French verse of every period. In 
 
 • 167.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 the long lines, the ten-syllable line and the Alexan- 
 drine, it is not common during the Classic centuries, 
 and, when it does occur, there is the exaction that 
 the overflow shall continue to the end of the second 
 line and complete it by the completion of the 
 thought. It is true that in the Alexandrine of come- 
 dies this rule was not applied. The versified plays 
 of Moliere are plentifully supplied with enjambe- 
 ment where the natural expressions of ordinary 
 people are reproduced; but in the serious and lofty 
 style of men who obeyed Malherbe's canons the use 
 of the overflow was rare, and subject to the law of 
 the completion of the second line. Boileau, writing 
 of the reform of versification in his century, says, 
 "et le vers sur le vers n'osa plus enjamber." 
 
 The Classic objection to the running of one line 
 into another was that the rhyme of the former of the 
 two lines was injured. The true enjambement neces- 
 sitates hurrying over the rhyme word, so that it can- 
 not receive its proper stress, the grammatical con- 
 nection of the words making it in general impossible 
 to bring due prominence to the rhyme, or to pause 
 after it. The completion of the overflow at the end 
 of the second line helps matters a little, for it pre- 
 vents a considerable pause in the body of the second 
 line, and thus restores partly the prosodic pattern, 
 which may have been obscured by the disappearance 
 of a rhyme and a line-end pause. In the first two of 
 
 . 168.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 the following examples can be seen the interrupting 
 influence of a short overflow, and in the third the 
 reassuring effect of an overflow which extends to the 
 end of the line into which it has intruded. 
 
 Tu desertais, victoire, et le sort etait las. 
 O Waterloo! je pleure et je m'arrete, helas ! 
 Car ces derniers soldats de la derniere guerre 
 Furent grands; ils avaient vaincu toute la terre, 
 Chasse vingt rois, passe les Alpes et le Rhin, 
 Et leur ame chantait dans les clairons d'airain ! 
 
 Stupefait du desastre et ne sachant que croire, 
 L'empereur se tourna vers Dieu ; l'homme de gloire 
 Trembla: Napoleon comprit qu'il expiait 
 Quelque chose peut-etre; et, livide, inquiet, 
 Devant ses legions sur la neige semees : 
 — Est-ce le chatiment, dit-il, Dieu des armees"? — 
 
 Homme libre, toujours tu cheriras la mer. 
 
 La mer est ton miroir ; tu contemples ton ame 
 
 Dans le deroulement infini de sa lame, 
 
 Et ton esprit n'est pas un gouffre moins amer. 
 
 Tu te plais a plonger au sein de ton image ; 
 Tu l'embrasses des yeux et des bras, et ton caeur 
 Se distrait quelques fois de sa propre rumeur, 
 Au bruit de cette plainte indomptable et sauvage. 
 
 With the other peculiarities which the Classic versi- 
 fiers would have called irregularities, the Romantic 
 
 • 169.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 poets introduced frequent enjambement, so that in 
 reading Romantic verse we are constantly con- 
 fronted by it, and no small ingenuity is needed some- 
 times in order to maintain rhythm. In fact, to one 
 who is not French, and therefore not imbued with 
 the feeling for French verse that comes by nature 
 and from the learning of Classic models in early 
 childhood, the overflow in Victor Hugo's poetry is 
 disconcerting. Hugo is the model and the authority 
 for all the use of overflow by the nineteenth-century 
 versifiers, and he may be assumed to know why he 
 has recourse to it. The less skillful of the Parnas- 
 sians and many poetasters undoubtedly fall into 
 enjambement because at times it is easier to use than 
 to avoid. Hugo employs it often for its dramatic 
 effect. In this passage from Hemam, where Charles 
 V speaks to the shade of Charlemagne, after ex- 
 pressing at length the awe which he feels in facing 
 the responsibilities and tasks lying before him if he 
 is elected emperor, the summing up, "car je n'ose y 
 toucher," gains incalculably from its position. 
 
 Ah ! puisque Dieu, pour qui tout obstacle s'efface, 
 Prend nos deux majestes et les met face a face, 
 Verse-moi dans le coeur, du fond de ce tombeau, 
 Quelque chose de grand, de sublime et de beau ! 
 Oh ! par tous ses cotes f ais-moi voir toute chose. 
 Montre-moi que le monde est petit, car je n'ose 
 Y toucher. Montre-moi que sur cette Babel 
 
 • 170.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Qui du patre a Cesar va montant jusqu'au ciel, 
 Chacun en son degre se complait et s'admire, 
 Voit l'autre par-dessous et se retient d'en rire. 
 
 Though the following is not dramatic poetry, it 
 is certainly highly dramatic as description : 
 
 II neigeait. On etait vaincu par sa conquete. 
 Pour la premiere fois l'aigle baissait la tete. 
 Sombres jours! l'empereur revenait lentement, 
 Laissant derriere lui bruler Moscou fumant. 
 II neigeait. L'apre hiver fondait en avalanche. 
 Apres la plaine blanche une autre plaine blanche. 
 On ne connaissait plus les chefs ni le drapeau. 
 Hier la grande armee, et maintenant troupeau. 
 On ne distinguait plus les ailes ni le centre : 
 II neigeait. Les blesses s'abritaient dans le ventre 
 Des chevaux morts : au seuil des bivouacs desoles 
 On voyait des clairons a leur poste geles 
 Restes debout, en selle et muets, blancs de givre, 
 Collant leur bouche en pierre aux trompettes de cuivre. 
 Boulets, mitraille, obus, meles aux flocons blancs, 
 Pleuvaient; les grenadiers, surpris d'etre tremblants, 
 Marchaient pensifs, la glace a leur moustache grise. 
 II neigeait, il neigeait toujours! la froide bise 
 Sifflait; sur le verglas, dans des lieux inconnus, 
 On n'avait pas de pain et Ton allait pieds nus. 
 
 In these verses, which are the opening lines of 
 r Expiation, it is more difficult to indicate just 
 what Hugo accomplishes by the overflow, and the 
 abruptness which he brings to his aid in the 11 
 
 . 171 .
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 neigeait. . . . Sombres jours! . . . II neigeait. . . . II 
 neigeait. . . . Pleuvaient. . . . Sifflait. The reader 
 can feel the effect better than we can describe it. 
 The twenty lines contain three cases of true over- 
 flow, and six of something almost as hostile to the 
 rhythm. 
 
 If we leave out of account for a moment the 
 rhythmic design of these extracts, nothing can be 
 more desirable than the dramatic effects procured by 
 the suspended construction with its abrupt climax. 
 The temporary eclipse of rhythm in such cases can- 
 not be regretted, for after all poetry has first claim, 
 and rhythm is poetry's servitor. Hugo has been more 
 daring in enjatnbement than anyone else worthy to 
 be mentioned with him, and his boldness is justified 
 by his power to regain at once his firm and convinc- 
 ing rhythm. No French verse-maker has stronger 
 buttresses of stress and quantity and rhyme than he. 
 If he chooses to shatter rhythm we have seen how he 
 instantly rebuilds it. 
 
 But it is not always for dramatic purposes that 
 he makes an overflow. Not rarely he and his school 
 aim by this expedient to give relief to the ear. How- 
 ever pleasing a fairly regular design in verse may be, 
 it seems to be productive of more satisfaction if it 
 is temporarily suspended now and then. The restora- 
 tion of its plan is reassuring, and it can run on again 
 for a considerable time without giving an effect of 
 
 .172.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 monotony. The reader will sometimes be able to 
 conceal in part this break in the rhythm, if he yields 
 a trifle to the influence of the verse pattern. The 
 rhyme word to which the particular case of enjambe- 
 ment denies a full stress can generally be emphasized 
 somewhat, and a pause after it can be at least sug- 
 gested. The completion of the overflow in the second 
 line may be marked by a pause hardly longer than 
 an ordinary cesura. Such tricks might be hardly 
 fair to the sense of the passage, but intelligence and 
 taste must be counted upon to prevent too great 
 violence being done to the meaning. There is always 
 a certain danger to sense and common punctuation in 
 rhythmic expression ; yet the ear does not, as a rule, 
 warn against slight falsification of this kind. 
 
 Qu'importe ! Ici tout berce, et rassure et caresse. 
 Plus d'ombre dans le coeur ! plus de soucis amers ! 
 Une ineffable paix monte et descend sans cesse 
 Du bleu profond de l'ame au bleu profond des mers. 
 
 In the stanza above, a prose utterance of the third 
 and fourth lines would not ordinarily give a pause 
 after the word cesse, which does not complete any- 
 thing. But if we are thoroughly impressed by the 
 rhythm we can yield to its influence, and, by treating 
 sans cesse as if it were a short parenthesis, get enough 
 time between the lines and enough stress on cesse to 
 keep the pattern approximately intact. 
 
 •173-
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 When de Musset wrote, 
 
 Qu' as tu fait pour mourir, 6 noble creature, 
 Belle image de Dieu, qui donnais en chemin 
 Au riche un peu de joie, au malheureux du pain*? 
 
 he made a sentence which overflows; but the sense 
 of the last line offers us the possibility of keeping 
 the rhythm. There is a contrast to be brought out 
 between au riche and au malheureux, and this can 
 best be shown by adding to the effect of the em- 
 phasis placed on those words the effect of a pause 
 before them. 
 
 . . . Dieu, qui donnais en chemin — 
 
 Au riche un peu de joie, — au malheureux du pain. 
 
 Such cases are easy to handle, but there are others 
 which do not offer a chance for evasion of the strict 
 construction of the overflowing sentence. For in- 
 stance, it would be difficult to justify a pause after 
 the fifth line of the following stanza, except by 
 saying that the rhythmic pattern almost forces the 
 reader to make one. Probably most readers would 
 not really pause after that line, but would imagine 
 that they had done so, or would feel, at the end of 
 the sixth line, that the rhythm, slightly disturbed at 
 farouche, was pleasingly restored by se couche. 
 
 — Desormais tu n'es plus, 6 matiere vivante ! 
 Qu'un granit entoure d'une vague epouvante, 
 Assoupi dans le fond d'un Saharah brumeux ! 
 
 • 174-
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Un vieux sphinx ignore du monde insoucieux, 
 Oublie sur la carte, et dont l'humeur farouche 
 Ne chante qu'aux rayons du soleil qui se couche ! 
 
 Since the earlier stanzas of this poem are im- 
 peccable in rhyme, in stress, and in pause, the 
 slight irregularity produced by this enjambement 
 is felt to be a relief, and the poem in ending 
 leaves a sense of variety rather than monotony. 
 Where the overflow is of a clearly uncompromis- 
 ing character, and in addition terminates in the 
 body of a line, there results an effect of abruptness, 
 as well as an obliteration of a rhyme. Nothing can 
 be done then in palliation. We must accept a sus- 
 pension of the rhythmic formula, and find its re- 
 establishment as soon as possible in the succeeding 
 verses. Very often we are not called upon to pardon 
 the lapse. On the contrary, it is grateful to our ears. 
 Everyone knows the value of an imperfect rhyme 
 in adding to the sweetness of true rhymes that 
 follow. It is the dissonance of verse; and overflow is 
 very like tempo rubato. After it the exact spacing of 
 the beats regains all the charm of newness in design. 
 An occasional enjambement is permissible in any 
 versifier, and may even be counted to his credit if 
 he has plainly made use of it for rhetorical or 
 rhythmic enhancement. Too frequent instances of it, 
 however, are not tolerable, and no reader should 
 expect to manage such a specimen as Albert Gla- 
 
 .175.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 tigny's Ballade des Enfants Sans Souci with much 
 pleasure derived from the rhythm. It is hardly estab- 
 lished before the poet dislocates it. In fact, he begins 
 by dislocating his conceived rhythm, and the eye 
 has to do in the first few lines, and frequently after- 
 ward, in this poem, what the ear cannot. It is only 
 from the well-known form in which the stanzas are 
 built, with the same rhymes in exactly the same 
 arrangement, i.e., because we recognize the reiter- 
 ated stanza structure of a ballade, that we obtain 
 here much rhythmic satisfaction. In other words, the 
 strict rhyme scheme, of -er, -ee, and -*', over and 
 over again, keeps together what the numerous cases 
 of overflow tend to scatter. Yet, without some relief, 
 is not this form a terribly monotonous one to modern 
 ears? Let us praise Glatigny for his ingenuity, and 
 let us read his ballade with just a little more than 
 natural stress on the rhymes. By that expedient, 
 and the aid of the emphatic Merci of the envoi, we 
 reach the familiar last word, souci, and end with a 
 sense of having maintained a true rhythm. 
 
 lis vont pieds nus le plus souvent. L'hiver 
 Met a leurs doigts des mitaines d'onglee. 
 Le soir, helas ! ils soupent du grand air, 
 Et sur leur front la bise echevelee 
 Gronde, pareille au bruit d'une melee. 
 A peine un peu leur sort est adouci 
 Quand avril fuit la terre consolee. 
 Ayez pitie des Enfants sans souci. 
 
 . 176.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 lis n'ont sur eux que le manteau du ver, 
 Quand les frissons de la voute etoilee 
 Font tressaillir et briller leur ceil clair. 
 Par la montagne abrupte et la vallee, 
 lis vont, ils vont ! A leur troupe affolee 
 Chacun repond: "Vous n'etes pas d'ici, 
 Prenez ailleurs, oiseaux, votre volee." 
 Ayez pitie des Enfants sans souci. 
 
 Un froid de mort fait dans leur pauvre chair 
 Glacer le sang, et leur veine est gelee. 
 Les cceurs pour eux se cuirassent de fer. 
 Le trepas vient. Ils vont sans mausolee 
 Pourrir au coin d'un champ ou d'une allee, 
 Et les corbeaux mangent leur corps transi 
 Que lavera la froide giboulee. 
 Ayez pitie des Enfants sans souci. 
 
 ENVOI 
 
 Pour cette vie effroyable, filee 
 De mal, de peine, ils te disent : Merci ! 
 Muse, comme eux, avec eux, exilee. 
 Ayez pitie des Enfants sans souci! 
 
 A great master of the music of verse might not need 
 the rigidity of a "fixed form" to redeem the more 
 or less frequent overflow of lines. Verlaine, in the 
 fragment below, succeeds in creating a rhythm in 
 spite of enjambement, neglected "mute" <?, varied 
 position of the cesura, and total disregard of the 
 disposition of long syllables. He merely rhymes and 
 
 .177.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 observes, visually at any rate, the syllable count. 
 Nothing with twelve syllables could be farther from 
 the Classic Alexandrine in sound, yet these are 
 Alexandrines: 
 
 "Telles, quand des brebis sortent d'un clos. C'est une, 
 Puis deux, puis trois. Le reste est la, les yeux baisses, 
 La tete a terre, et l'air des plus embarrasses, 
 Faisant ce que fait leur chef de file : il s'arrete, 
 Elles s'arretent tour a tour, posant leur tete 
 Sur son dos simplement et sans savoir pourquoi." 
 Votre pasteur, 6 mes brebis, ce n'est pas moi, 
 C'est un meilleur, un bien meilleur, qui sait les causes, 
 Lui qui vous tint longtemps et si longtemps la closes, 
 Mais qui vous delivra de sa main au temps vrai. 
 Suivez-le. Sa houlette est bonne. 
 
 Et je serai, 
 Sous sa voix toujours douce a votre ennui qui bele, 
 Je serai, moi, par vos chemins, son chien fidele. 
 
 From an English-speaking reader it requires con- 
 siderable effort and a very firm grasp of the funda- 
 mental structure of French verse in order that he 
 may feel the regularity of design in this extract, in 
 the face of all its irregularities. Only a knowledge 
 of all that has been written in previous pages con- 
 cerning the development of the Classic model, the 
 feminine rhyme, the management of "mute" £•, etc., 
 enables us to connect such a production with the 
 prosody of Racine. Really, when we take into 
 account the long drift of French pronunciation from 
 
 . 178.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Racine to Verlaine, it becomes absurd to maintain 
 that these lines truly comprise twelve syllables each, 
 or, if they do, that they have the other characteristics 
 of the old Alexandrine. For a Frenchman, as well 
 as for ourselves, it is easier to say that such pleasure 
 as can be gotten from reading or hearing them is 
 due to a new music, the poet's own, not the music of 
 the Classic versification. Hence it became the fashion 
 in the last two decades of the nineteenth century 
 to declare that a new prosody had come into exist- 
 ence, that syllable count was immaterial, that 
 stresses and cesuras were not subject to rules, even 
 that rhymes were not indispensable. The one thing 
 required was that the author of the so-called Vers 
 Libre should have admirers who shared his opinion 
 as to the beauty of his product. In the nature of 
 things, such compositions could not be measured 
 by any common standard. The movement was in its 
 essence prosodic individualism, if indeed it can be 
 termed prosodic at all. Verlaine was unwittingly a 
 pathfinder. Now, Verlaine was not a vers-libriste; 
 but his disregard of so many details of the old versi- 
 fication, and his success in combining a harmony of 
 words and ideas, led a crowd of literary people to 
 believe that, by carrying the process farther, French 
 poetry could acquire an atmosphere and a vagueness 
 in suggestion, which it had certainly lacked in all 
 its course before. 
 
 • '79-
 
 XII. 
 VERS LIBRE 
 
 If due allowance be made for the extrava- 
 gances of the writers of the Vers Libre, there can be 
 found much to recommend in the innovation. Of 
 course, the mere rejection of capital letters at the 
 beginning of the lines, like the refusal to divide the 
 so-called poem in a manner at all different from 
 that characteristic of prose, is nothing but a detail 
 interesting to a printing office. No principle under- 
 lies such action, unless it be the principle which is 
 said to have led Scotch Covenanters to stand in 
 prayer, — because Catholics knelt. Young enthusiasts 
 will often mistake contradiction for originality. 
 Other peculiarities in Vers Libre, however, have a 
 better excuse. 
 
 The elimination of rhyme, in imitation of Eng- 
 lish blank verse, may have been an honest effort. It 
 has not succeeded; the vers-libristes rhyme, although 
 they are far from being in agreement with one an- 
 other as to the exact importance or prominence of 
 rhyme. Some of them are very inaccurate from the 
 viewpoint of Classic rhyming, making plurals and 
 
 . 180.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 singulars match, and pairing words ending in 
 "mute" e with words prosodically masculine. As for 
 observing the rule about alternation of masculine 
 and feminine rhymes, few of them think of that. 
 When it comes to counting syllables, no uniformity 
 can be found in the practice of these writers. It is 
 labor lost to try to ascertain whether two contiguous 
 lines that seem to have the same length have truly 
 the same measurement either in number of syllables, 
 in number of stress accents, or in time required for 
 their utterance. Occasionally the basis of rhythm 
 seems to be, as in English, chiefly related to the 
 recurrence of stressed syllables. Sometimes the ar- 
 rangement of long and short vowels appears to be 
 the vital thing. Hiatus may be in evidence very 
 often, and the cesura can be anywhere or nowhere. 
 
 Now this chaos did not proceed from one and the 
 same impulse. A rather long story could be written 
 about its evolution if we were theorizing instead of 
 trying to show how enjoyment can be gotten even 
 from the Vers Libre. Two things, however, have 
 plainly conspired to make this individualistic system 
 possible, — one being the change in French pronun- 
 ciation, the other Verlaine's accomplishment and 
 method, in other words, his charm and success. 
 
 It was the contention of some foreigners who read 
 or wrote French verse that the French did not pro- 
 nounce as they themselves supposed they did, and 
 
 . 181 .
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 that therefore the rules commonly observed did not 
 deserve observance. The question was a delicate one 
 for any to discuss but Frenchmen born and bred; 
 and in some fine distinctions of sound the foreign 
 critics were plainly wrong. But there were natives 
 who realized that in some particulars this criticism 
 was correct. At any rate, the vers-libriste did not 
 desire to be hampered in his expression by Mal- 
 herbe's prescriptions. The hiatus he found so com- 
 mon in his prose speech that he saw no reason for 
 avoiding it in his verse. If we admit creature or le 
 her os or tuas, why should we exclude tu as or lui est? 
 Evidently, if the versifier is cautious in the use of 
 this dangerous thing, he can very well introduce it. 
 Again, there are certainly some feminine rhymes 
 which have no longer a special quality that prevents 
 their being used to match syllables that do not end 
 in "mute" e. Endure and dur are rhymes. So are 
 ?nur??iure and ?nur, or even murs, for the s of plurals 
 does not affect anything before it when there is no 
 liaison formed. The prohibition of rhyme between 
 mur and murs, and the so-called poetic license that 
 made je voi replace je vois if it was to rhyme with 
 c' est toi or convoi, were in 1885 nothing but rules for 
 the eye, whatever might have been their raison d'etre 
 nearly three centuries earlier. It certainly was once 
 true that the s marking the plural number length- 
 ened to an appreciable degree the vowel immediately 
 
 . 182.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 preceding, therefore such words as pretendu and 
 entendus were not then perfectly rhymed. But few 
 Frenchmen in the nineteenth century so much as 
 knew that such had ever been the case. Long after 
 this distinction had passed away, and after final 
 "mute" e directly following any vowel, as in lue or 
 citee, had ceased to have a separate syllabic sound, 
 the French maintained, especially in the provinces, 
 that the presence of the "mute" vowel lengthened 
 the other. But if in the latter half of the last century 
 lue did not rhyme with valu, or citee with cite, it 
 was not because Parisian ears could detect the slight- 
 est variation in either length or quality in the pairs 
 of syllables quoted. Inspection of M. Passy's tran- 
 scriptions will prove that he recognizes no diver- 
 gence in sound in such cases. As for the alternation 
 of masculine and feminine rhymes, the obligation 
 to make it with unvarying regularity was deemed a 
 fetter, and while no writer of Vers Libre has disre- 
 garded the potence of change in rhyme gender, none 
 feels that there is anything but gain in using one 
 class of ending as long as he pleases. 
 
 The following fairly characteristic, yet not ex- 
 treme specimens of the new freedom in verse will 
 show what liberties are taken with the rules. In the 
 first it cannot be said that the syllable count is at all 
 abnormal. Nor is the use of a seven-syllable line 
 alternating with one of six syllables a violation of 
 
 .183.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 any rule. It is unusual in French versification, how- 
 ever, and is due to Verlaine's recommendation to 
 favor an odd number. The alternation of masculine 
 and feminine rhymes is not present. In fact, there 
 is apparently premeditation in the employment of 
 eight feminine rhymes in succession, in the second 
 and third stanzas, with four masculine in each of the 
 first and fourth. 
 
 Des fleurs du soir plein tes mains, 
 Tous les cieux dans tes yeux, 
 Et l'espoir des lendemains 
 Dans tes yeux et les cieux, 
 
 Tu vins par la plaine jaune, 
 En ce froid mois d'automne, 
 O la donneuse d'aumone 
 Dont le pauvre s'etonne . . . 
 
 On dit que sur la montagne 
 Tombe deja la neige, 
 Mais qu'importe a qui regagne 
 L'atre ou le feu s'abrege? 
 
 Ce sera bientot pour nous 
 Baisers et bon sommeil, 
 Mienne, et dans nos bras jaloux 
 L'oubli du vieux soleil. 
 
 Stuart Merrill. 
 
 If these four stanzas are read in a natural way they 
 will be found very pleasing. The reader can decide 
 
 . 184.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 for himself how their stresses and long syllables are 
 arranged. One thing should be pointed out perhaps, 
 that is, the curious way in which the poet violates 
 the rule of alternation and yet obeys the principle 
 that underlies it. Mains and lendemains have all the 
 abruptness and finality of true masculines, while 
 yeux and cieux, though masculine also, afford con- 
 trast by having the length and gradual cessation of 
 sound which feminines afford in the pronunciation 
 of to-day. Jaune and aumone are true feminines 
 with all the quality of that rhyme gender; but 
 automne (pronounced otonn) and s'etonne are 
 sharply terminated in the present pronunciation, 
 and show no effect of an e final. Montague and 
 regagne practically require the sound of final "mute" 
 e as a supporting vowel, and therefore produce some- 
 thing like the extra syllable in the verse, which was 
 originally the office of a feminine rhyme. On the 
 other hand, neige and s'abrege are true enough femi- 
 nines, but feminines of the modern kind, slow, pro- 
 longed, and adding nothing syllabic to the line. In 
 the last quatrain nous and jaloux contrast in their 
 brevity with the long e and semi-vowel of the ending 
 of sommeil and soleil, though these are technically 
 masculine. 
 
 If all Vers Libre used its liberty as sanely as this 
 sample, not even Malherbe would be able to deny 
 its claims. But what would he say to this production 
 
 . 185.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 by Gustave Kahn, the earliest exponent of the inno- 
 vation in all its freedom'? 
 
 In the following the lines seem intended to con- 
 tain, some eleven, and some nine syllables. If, 
 though, the strictly Classic method be applied the 
 count will not be found exact. And the rhymes do 
 not alternate properly. Some of them are mere 
 repetitions of the same word, and others are not 
 obedient to old distinctions, although they are cer- 
 tainly good in everyday utterance. For instance, 
 fringants, vent, and levants would not have been 
 admissible before this movement came to assert that 
 they ought to be admitted. Epanouie, ouie, and rouis 
 are as incorrectly mated. 
 
 However, there is music in the whole poem of 
 seven strophes, and many readers have felt its 
 appeal. 
 
 File a ton rouet, file a ton rouet, file et pleure, 
 Ou dors au moutier de tes indifferences, 
 Ou marche somnambule aux nuits des recurrences ; 
 Seule a ton rouet, seule, file et pleure. 
 
 Sur la route, les cavaliers fringants 
 Poussent les chevaux envoles dans le vent, 
 Souriants et chanteurs s'en vont, vers les levants 
 Sur la route ensoleillee, les cavaliers fringants. 
 
 File a ton rouet, seule a ton rouet, file, et pleure. 
 Seule a ton rouet, file, crains, pleure. 
 
 . 186.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Et celui dont la tendresse epanouie 
 Souffre aux nerfs, aux soucis, a l'ouie, 
 Celui-la s'en ira pour consoler ses doutes 
 Aux refuges semes le long des apres routes ; 
 Suspends aux greniers les chanvres rouis. 
 
 File a ton rouet, les chansons sont legeres, 
 Les images redisent les gloires des marins, 
 Les chansons s'evident aux heures plus legeres, 
 Proches du retour sonore des marins. 
 
 Et voici, las des autans et des automnes 
 
 Au ciel noir des flots qui tonnent, 
 
 Le voici passer qui vient du fond des ages, 
 
 Noir et brun et si triste : et les lents marecages 
 
 De ses yeux ou demeurent stagnantes les douleurs 
 
 S'arreteront epars sur tes yeux de douleurs. 
 
 Seule a ton rouet, file et pleure. 
 
 Tes candeurs nubiles s'en iraient au gouffre, 
 
 Au gouffre l'ame du passe qui souffre 
 
 Depuis les temps, les temps, les leurres et les leurres. 
 
 File a ton rouet, seule, file et pleure. 
 
 Gustave Kahn. 
 
 Unfortunately we cannot give any general directions 
 for reading such verse. Its very programme pre- 
 cludes such a thing as a generality. 
 
 The one principle underlying the work of the 
 vers-libriste is that the new poetry, mostly Sym- 
 bolisme, of course, must have free expression, and 
 that regularity of verse form compels the adaptation 
 
 . 187.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 of the thought to the form. If the form is truly fixed 
 it is antecedent to the matter seeking to fit into it. 
 If, as the vers-libristes did, we take their manifesta- 
 tion as aimed against the Parnassians we can easily 
 share their idea. The Parnassians struggled for 
 Classic impersonality; and their rich and astonishing 
 rhyme led often to virtuosity, and little more. There 
 is a famous pair of lines by Alphonse Allais, which 
 show what nonsense can result from fantastic per- 
 fection. Here is not only rich rhyme; but syllable 
 before syllable, as we trace the verses back, falls into 
 the rhyme, till there is nothing but rhyme. 
 
 Par le bois du Djinn, ou s'entasse de l'effroi, 
 Parle, bois du gin ou cent tasses de lait froid. 
 
 This of course is not serious, but it has served to 
 prove, at least to lovers of Vers Libre, to what depths 
 a versifier can descend. These admirers of the "re- 
 generated" French verse never contended that the 
 greater Parnassians were not great; they admitted 
 their claims and praised their success in triumphing 
 over a prosodic system that offered such unjustifiable 
 difficulties. Whether the writers of Vers Libre are 
 not themselves hampered by the necessity they labor 
 under, — to depart in one or several particulars from 
 the accepted rules of versification, — is a fair ques- 
 tion. Probably their best results are obtained when 
 they come nearest to a Classic or Romantic standard, 
 
 . 188.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 merely permitting their lines or their rhymes to 
 enjoy a little latitude and elasticity. In Kahn's poem 
 just quoted there is a strange beauty in the sort of 
 refrain, Seule a ton rouet, file et pleure, with its 
 variations, which gives, as a song might give, the 
 sadness of a woman's lot in an age or a land of 
 adventure for men. The power of seule, file, pleure 
 in their use here is wonderful, but it is to genius or 
 chance that Kahn owes it. A formula for such an 
 effect can hardly be made. The rest of the poem is 
 a vague and incomplete picture of typical abandon- 
 ments, and for a reader who can be content with 
 impressions in place of ideas, the sound of the lines 
 makes up for their indefiniteness and is full of 
 beauty. Yet it is not unreasonable to assert that the 
 rhythmic balance of the composition is not left to 
 chance, but is maintained by occasional good ten- 
 syllable verses like, 
 
 Et celui dont la tendresse epanouie, 
 or good Alexandrines like, 
 
 Les chansons s'evident aux heures plus legeres, 
 and 
 
 S'arreteront epars sur tes yeux de douleurs. 
 
 In reading such verse one must learn to detect the 
 rhythm, or perhaps it would be better to say the 
 
 . 189.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 "movement" of a line, at first sight, and be ready 
 to accept another immediately, in case a change is 
 made. The variation of movement is to be looked 
 for more frequently in Vers Libre than in normal 
 French verse, and the reader is asked to feel the 
 appeal of a design which lasts perhaps no longer 
 than the duration of the line which inaugurates it. 
 He is required to pass from rhythm to rhythm, as 
 indeed he must do in regular verse, but without the 
 steadying influence of syllable basis. For this stabi- 
 lizing, rhyme is the most obvious dependence. A 
 little care in reading will usually enable us to make 
 the rhymes effective, by emphasizing them and spac- 
 ing them as we conceive that it was the intention of 
 the versifier to have us do. If we read a poem in 
 Vers Libre twice, the second reading will generally 
 give us a conception of some broad scheme. The 
 rhyming is almost always correct, judged by ordi- 
 nary pronunciation in Paris. For one instance, which 
 was hinted at a few pages back, as e final after a 
 vowel is no longer of any value whatever in culti- 
 vated French, Kahn's rhyme with Vouie and rouis is 
 perfect to the ear. The s denoting a plural form has, 
 also, no sound where there is no liaison, so there can 
 be no real offense as rhymes in automnes and eton- 
 nent when heard. 
 
 As to the spacing of rhymes with a necessary 
 minimum of regularity, we have already seen that 
 
 • 190.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 the Classic measure of pronounced syllables from 
 rhyme to rhyme is no longer to be depended upon. 
 The latest verses on a strictly Classic model, and the 
 real Classic verses of the seventeenth century when 
 pronounced in nineteenth-century style, are really 
 variable in the number of their syllables. This has 
 already been sufficiently shown in our remarks on 
 the management of "mute" e, the development of 
 diphthongs whose first vowel is i, u or ou, and the 
 lengthening of syllables in certain positions. In the 
 manner of reading in vogue to-day, many an Alex- 
 andrine practically has no more than nine syllables; 
 others have ten. Owing to the presence of at least one 
 literally "mute" e in nearly every line a very great 
 number of Alexandrines are of eleven syllables only. 
 Occasionally, if the last word in a verse ends in e 
 as a supporting vowel, there can be thirteen syllables 
 instead of the typical twelve. And similar conditions 
 are common in the ten-syllable and shorter lines. 
 How many syllables are really to be heard in this 
 Alexandrine of de Musset's? 
 
 N'etait-ce pas hier, pale Desdemona *? 
 
 (Ces pleurs sur tes bras nus, quand tu chantais le Saule, 
 
 N'etait-ce pas hier, pale Desdemona*?) 
 
 or in this by Chenier*? 
 
 Et moi, comme lui belle, et jeune comme lui, 
 
 . 191 •
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Are there truly ten syllables audible in 
 
 Fier de nourrir l'espoir qu'il a degu ? 
 
 And in this stanza of eight-syllable verses, which 
 ones lack a full count *? 
 
 Le soir ramene le silence. 
 Assis sur ces rochers deserts, 
 Je suis dans le vague des airs 
 Le char de la nuit qui s'avance. 
 
 {Ramene and vague make up by length for loss of 
 final e.) 
 
 Can one read this Alexandrine without coming 
 pretty near uttering thirteen syllables'? 
 
 Mais tout est precipice. lis ont eu droit de vivre. 
 
 Or this 1 ? 
 
 L'un y voit son vieux pere assis au coin de l'atre. 
 
 As French verse has gradually adapted itself to 
 such substitutions of pauses and such compensations 
 in time for actual syllables, the way has been pre- 
 pared for a disregard of the precise number of sylla- 
 bles prescribed. In Kahn's File a ton Rouet, there- 
 fore, it matters little in the general scheme of 
 the poem if lines of nine, ten, eleven, and twelve 
 syllables are mingled together seemingly without 
 distinction. After all, Kahn is not so very far from 
 
 . 192 .
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 the practice of the Romantic poets, though he does 
 not claim to have any normal line length. He merely 
 allows his reader to find for himself a kind of 
 average time from rhyme to rhyme, and, having 
 found it, to accommodate to that average as many 
 lines as possible. By a certain amount of patient 
 repetition of this poem, with attention given to long 
 syllables and pauses, on the one hand, and the 
 elision, as well as the natural suppression of many 
 a "mute" e, on the other, the equalizing of line 
 lengths will come near being accomplished. If we 
 take the beginning of the fourth stanza as an ex- 
 ample, 
 
 Et celui dont la tendresse epanouie 
 Souffre aux nerfs, aux soucis, a l'oui'e, 
 
 the first line contains ten syllables, each of which, 
 with the exception of the second of tendresse, is 
 short. The following line has nine syllables; but with 
 souffre possibly long, and nerfs unquestionably so, 
 and two important pauses indicated by the commas, 
 this line may take as much time in utterance as the 
 first. Moreover, each of the two lines bears three 
 stresses at approximately identical places. 
 
 Et celui dont la ttrxdresse epanouz> 
 Souffre aux nerfs, aux soum, a Vouie. 
 
 Surely, for one who has an ear for anything but 
 syllable count there is regularity enough here.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 It is not intended that such equality of line length 
 shall always be produced by the reader. Sometimes 
 the versifier plainly changes length. Very often he 
 deliberately avails himself of the freedom expressed 
 by the term Vers Libre, and scorns regularity. What 
 has been suggested as to the feasibility of making 
 something regular out of this prosodic madness is 
 only to help discover some method in it, and to aid 
 the reader in an effort to like it. 
 
 Camille Mauclair, whose poem, Les Mains Lentes 
 sous la Lampe, is given below, has told the world 
 that he intended only "to make a little music" and 
 that to him "verse forms were indifferent." Yet 
 he seems to have observed, while not planning to 
 observe them, some essentials of regularity. It would 
 be time lost to argue the question whether the fol- 
 lowing lines are intended to contain seven or eight 
 syllables each. A little ingenuity could make them 
 all seven syllables or all eight; but that matter is 
 really as indifferent to the reader as the author said 
 it was to him. The lines are practically even in 
 length, though long syllables make some slower in 
 movement than others. In the first stanza lampe and 
 guirlandes form an assonance, not a rhyme. Else- 
 where, however, the rhymes are perfect in sound, 
 if not quite right to the eye; and it is curious to find 
 that the effect of alternate masculines and feminines 
 is obtained. Lampe and guirlandes have the feminine 
 
 .194.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 quality, and contrast with reflets and regrets. The 
 second and third stanzas follow prescription of 
 Classic times as to alternation, and the fourth is just 
 as regular, though destinies is forced to do duty as 
 a masculine rhyme, with volonte, a thing it is per- 
 fectly fit for, owing to its present pronunciation as 
 if it were destine. 
 
 Les mains lentes sous la lampe 
 Jouant avec les reflets 
 Tressent d'invisibles guirlandes 
 De songeries et de regrets. 
 
 La dentelle des brodeuses 
 Enlace leurs ames aussi, 
 Et denoue une trame heureuse 
 En fleurettes de souci. 
 
 Vers une fenetre endormie 
 Sous la lune du clair jardin, 
 Voltigent les calines mains 
 Sous la lampe epanouie, 
 
 Et leur fragile volonte 
 Croise d'un jeu soudain tragique 
 Le fil d'anciennes destinees 
 Sur leurs ongles ironiques. 
 
 So far, our quotations and comments have had the 
 purpose of demonstrating the reasonableness of some 
 Vers Libre, and therefore the ease and satisfaction 
 
 • *95-
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 with which it can be read by persons familiar with 
 strict verse form. Once admitted, however, the new 
 freedom became extreme, and passed into something 
 for which such an utterance as this by Viele-Griffin 
 prepares us. In his preface to Joies, published in 
 1889, he writes: "Verse is free, which does not mean 
 in the least that the old Alexandrine is abolished or 
 established, but, more broadly, that no unchange- 
 able design is any longer considered the mould nec- 
 essary to the expression of poetic thought. It means 
 that henceforth the poet will obey his personal 
 rhythm, which he ought to obey, without M. de 
 Banville, or any other 'law-giver of Parnassus,' hav- 
 ing the right to intervene." 
 
 Such declarations of prosodic independence could 
 be introduced here in very great number if it were 
 worth while to present what simply repeats the 
 notion contained in the words "personal rhythm." 
 
 The logical effect of this divorce from the old 
 versification can be seen, and better heard, in a 
 composition by Henri de Regnier, who, let it be said, 
 can produce the most beautiful and regular of regu- 
 lar verse when he will. 
 
 Si j'ai parle 
 
 De mon amour, c'est a l'eau lente 
 
 Qui m'ecoute quand je penche 
 
 Sur elle; si j'ai parle 
 
 De mon amour, c'est au vent 
 
 • 196.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Qui rit et chuchote entre les branches ; 
 
 Si j'ai parle de mon amour, c'est a l'oiseau 
 
 Qui passe et chante 
 
 Avec le vent ; 
 
 Si j'ai parle 
 
 C'est a l'echo. 
 
 Si j'ai aime de grand amour, 
 
 Triste ou joyeux, 
 
 Ce sont tes yeux ; 
 
 Si j'ai aime de grand amour, 
 
 Ce fut ta bouche grave et douce, 
 
 Ce fut ta bouche ; 
 
 Si j'ai aime de grand amour, 
 
 Ce furent ta chair tiede et tes mains fraiches, 
 
 Et c'est ton ombre que je cherche. 
 
 It seems hardly wise to say of this Odelette, as 
 it is entitled, more than that if de Regnier has suc- 
 ceeded in making the reader like the rhythm, the 
 personal rhythm of it, then two people at least are 
 agreed. There is, though little enough, some plan 
 in the sounds of the words in this very slight bit of 
 thought. The repetition of parle acts as a rhyme; 
 lente and penche make an assonance; vent is in 
 unison with vent; oiseau and echo are rhyming. In 
 the second half there is one good rhyme; amour ends 
 three lines; douce and bouche, fraiches and cherche, 
 are assonances. The short lines have each four sylla- 
 bles; the longer lines, — but what matters it, after 
 all? This is Vers Libre. 
 
 .197.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 So is Sur le Banc Vert, by Henri Bataille : 
 
 Sur le banc vert ou dort la pluie, 
 
 C'est la que va s'asseoir ma peine, 
 
 Vers le milieu de la nuit . . . 
 
 Seule, sans son maitre, quand nous dormons, 
 
 Elle sort de la maison, 
 
 Et ce n'est pas moi qui la mene . . . 
 
 Nous la-haut, nous revons, en bruines paisibles . . . 
 
 Alors elle s'assied sur le banc de rouille 
 
 Delassee, et le plus commodement possible. 
 
 Elle ne sent presque pas que la pluie la mouille, 
 
 Ma peine, ma bonne peine, ma vieille peine. 
 
 This is less than half the "poem," but the second 
 part does not make any clearer the meter or the 
 rhyme, — or indeed the reason, if there is meter, 
 rhyme, or reason in it. 
 
 Like other so-called acquired tastes the liking for 
 French Vers Libre will grow if persistently culti- 
 vated. Little by little the mind trained to look for 
 clearness, logic, and eloquence, not to say declama- 
 tion, in French poetry becomes reconciled to vague- 
 ness, impressionism, atmosphere, color, melancholy, 
 and morbidity. The ear at the same time excuses 
 departure from the long respected prosodic system, 
 and learns to seek and recognize "new harmonies" 
 in rhyme, alliteration, repetition, assonance, ingen- 
 ious combinations of consonants, and harpings upon 
 a single vowel sound. However, the freedom of the 
 form seems to have resulted in very little gain to 
 
 • 198.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 the matter embodied in it; though the plea for this 
 liberty was its emancipation of the poet's thought 
 from the chain forged by Malherbe and Boileau. 
 With some exceptions, this "thought," when ex- 
 pressed in Vers Libre, resembles closely the very 
 pleasant, but by no means logically arranged train 
 which passes before the mental eye of a person fall- 
 ing slowly to sleep. To begin with out-and-out Vers 
 Libre is a dangerous proceeding, if one wishes to get 
 a taste for it. A better plan is to take specimens 
 whose form is as regular as may be found, and to 
 progress towards the goal by degrees. There is such 
 a sample at hand in Stuart Merrill's Nocturne. 
 It is in Alexandrines, perfectly orthodox as to sylla- 
 ble count, but strangely and ingeniously slow in 
 pace. Many lines are without cesuras. Alliteration, 
 which heightens always the particular mood in 
 which it is employed, is in evidence everywhere. 
 There is a sort of play with the vowels that defies 
 analysis, but which is fascinatingly like a melody 
 as we follow it along through the characteristic 
 "upper partials." 
 
 La bleme lune allume en la mare qui luit, 
 Miroir des gloires d'or, un emoi d'incendie. 
 Tout dort, Seul a mi-mort, un rossignol de nuit 
 Module en mal d'amour sa molle melodie. 
 
 Plus ne vibrent les vents en le mystere vert 
 Des ramures. La lune a tu leurs voix nocturnes : 
 
 .199.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Mais a travers le deuil du feuillage entr'ouvert 
 Pleuvent les bleus baisers des astres taciturnes. 
 
 La vieille volupte de rever a la mort 
 
 A l'entour de la mare endort l'ame des choses. 
 
 A peine la foret parfois fait-elle effort 
 
 Sous le frisson furtif de ses metamorphoses. 
 
 Chaque feuille s'efface en des brouillards subtils, 
 Du zenith de l'azur ruisselle la rosee 
 Dont le cristal s'incruste en perles aux pistils 
 Des nenuphars flottant sur 1'eau fleurdelysee. 
 
 Rien n'emane du noir, ni vol, ni vent, ni voix, 
 Sauf lorsqu' au loin des bois, par soudaines saccades, 
 Un ruisseau turbulent roule sur les gravois : 
 L'echo s'emeut alors de l'eclat des cascades. 
 
 It would seem, especially as the stressed syllables 
 in the foregoing are quite normally arranged, that 
 here is something easy to read, and a very good 
 example of the beauties of the Vers Libre when 
 scorning to avail itself of all its liberty. The whole 
 regularity of the Classic verse, so faithfully ob- 
 served, does not result in the exclusion of what the 
 new freedom claims to have alone admitted. 
 
 In the Serenade, by Adolphe Rette, there is a 
 less strict adherence to rule, and a very different 
 movement produced by the unexpected introduction 
 of a line of three syllables here and there among 
 the lines of seven. There are some assonances, like 
 calme and naiades, and an erratic grouping of 
 
 . 200.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 rhymes. The first rhymes are masculine, roseaux, 
 oiseau; and then there are seventeen lines before we 
 find another of that character, namely, sureau. The 
 intervening lines show two instances of assonance, 
 soupirent, palpite, limpides, and fraises, tresse, mar- 
 jolaine. One line ends with muses, for which no 
 rhyme nor assonance is to be found. Some allitera- 
 tions can be heard, and the long nasal ending -ante 
 is employed with effect in the latter part of the 
 poem. 
 
 Belle la lune est si calme : 
 
 Pris au levres des naiades, 
 
 Le soir dort dans les roseaux 
 
 Et pas meme un oiseau 
 Ne se leve. — 
 
 Vois languir au long des greves 
 L'eau qui reve. 
 
 Les noirs marronniers soupirent 
 
 Ou palpite 
 L'or des etoiles limpides, 
 Les cascades murmurantes, 
 Les vagues chuchoteuses 
 
 Sous les yeuses 
 Vers la lune se lamentent. 
 Entends cette voix charmante : 
 
 L'eau qui chante. 
 
 Viens, je sais le val des fraises, 
 
 Je te tresse 
 Un lien de marjolaines . . . 
 
 . 201 •
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Tu te detournes, tu muses 
 
 Aux bouquets blancs des sureaux! 
 
 Je detache ta ceinture 
 
 Et je cueille ton sanglot. — 
 
 L'eau lascive au loin s'argente, 
 L'eau qui reve, l'eau qui chante, 
 L'eau qui fuit sous les roseaux. 
 
 Perhaps it would require a keener appreciation of 
 French sounds than most English readers can ac- 
 quire, in order to enjoy fully the music of these 
 stanzas; but even an elementary ability to detect 
 their long vowels and their stresses will make them 
 more than merely pretty. They are truly beautiful. 
 Something with more meaning, and an appro- 
 priately rugged form, is to be read in Verhaeren's 
 Les Horloges. In spite of their variable syllable 
 length, the following lines can very easily be made 
 to seem sufficiently even; and the strict alternation 
 of masculine and feminine rhymes helps the reader 
 to make some approach to regularity with what is 
 truly Vers Libre. Verhaeren in his unmistakable and 
 strong stress is not unlike an Englishman or a Ger- 
 man, and therefore his verse, however "libre," is not 
 as "foreign" to us as that of most of his school. 
 
 La nuit, dans le silence en noir de nos demeures, 
 Bequilles et batons qui se cognent, la-bas ; 
 Montant et devalant les escaliers des heures, 
 Les horloges, avec leurs pas; 
 
 .202 • 

 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Emaux naifs derriere un verre, emblemes 
 Et fleurs d'antan, chiffres maigres et vieux; 
 Lunes des corridors vides et blemes, 
 Les horloges, avec leurs yeux ; 
 
 Sons morts, notes de plomb, marteaux et limes, 
 Boutique en bois de mots sournois, 
 Et le babil des secondes minimes, 
 Les horloges, avec leurs voix ; 
 
 Gaines de chenes et bornes d'ombre, 
 Cercueils scelles dans le mur froid, 
 Vieux os du temps que grignote le nombre, 
 Les horloges et leur efTroi ; 
 
 Les horloges 
 
 Volontaires et vigilantes, 
 
 Pareilles aux vieilles servantes 
 
 Boitant de leurs sabots ou glissant sur leurs bas, 
 
 Les horloges que j'interroge 
 
 Serrent ma peur en leur compas. 
 
 Verhaeren does not, with very rare exceptions, 
 reach a degree of irregularity in his verse greater 
 than that in the bit just given. He is an excellent 
 poet for an English-speaking reader to use while 
 trying to master the peculiarities of Vers Libre. His 
 rhymes are obvious, and it is easy to detect his 
 intentions as to rhythm, because his stressed syllables 
 are so unmistakable. 
 
 One of the few comprehensible pieces of Maurice 
 Maeterlinck's earlier "versification" is just as plain 
 
 .203.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 in its indication of the stresses ; in fact, it seems very- 
 like English accentual verse, and, though not fully- 
 rhymed, reads with much the same effect as many a 
 song of our own. 
 
 CHANSON 
 
 Et s'il revenait un jour 
 Que faut-il lui dire? 
 
 — Dites-lui qu'on l'attendit 
 Jusqu'a s'en mourir . . . 
 
 Et s'il m'interroge encore 
 Sans me reconnaitre ? 
 
 — Parlez-lui comme une sceur, 
 II souffre peut-etre . . . 
 
 Et s'il demande ou vous etes, 
 Que faut il repondre? 
 
 — Donnez-lui mon anneau d'or 
 Sans rien lui repondre . . . 
 
 Et s'il veut savoir pourquoi 
 La salle est deserte? 
 
 — Montrez-lui la lampe eteinte 
 Et la porte ouverte . . . 
 
 Et s'il m'interroge alors 
 Sur la derniere heure? 
 
 — Dites-lui que j'ai souri, 
 De peur qu'il ne pleure. 
 
 The syllabic count of these lines is evidently seven 
 and five in alternation, but quite as clearly there is 
 
 • 204.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 no intention that this fact should be as prominent 
 in the rhythm as the arrangement of stresses and 
 long syllables. 
 
 One more specimen may be introduced, merely 
 to show how far a maker of Vers Libre has been will- 
 ing to go in the direction of prose. It is not as far 
 as our writers go to-day in much that passes for 
 poetry in England and America. But, even if we 
 believe that the French led the way to our present 
 disregard of technique, whereby every man can be 
 his own poet, they never seriously acted as if they 
 believed verse to be nothing but bad prose. The 
 French have always been bold as innovators; but 
 their sense of artistic form and their natural equi- 
 librium have prevented their running beyond cer- 
 tain bounds, except perhaps in experiment. 
 
 There is in what follows the very slightest possi- 
 bility of finding verse. It appears that it would have 
 to be broken up into different lines in order to make 
 of it properly sounding prose, that is, prose with a 
 prose rhythm. Such beauty as the extract may have 
 it presents to the eye and not to the ear. 
 
 LE VASE 
 
 Mon marteau lourd sonnait dans l'air leger, 
 Je voyais la riviere et le verger, 
 La prairie et jusques au bois, 
 Sous le ciel bleu d'heure en heure, 
 Puis rose et mauve au crepuscule. 
 
 • 205 •
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Alors je me levais tout droit 
 Et m'etirais heureux de la tache des heures, 
 Gourd de m'etre accroupi de l'aube au crepuscule 
 Devant le bloc de marbre ou je taillis les pans 
 Du vase fruste encor que mon marteau pesant, 
 Rythmant le matin clair et la bonne journee, 
 Heurtait, joyeux d'etre sonore en l'air leger! 
 
 Le vase naissait dans la pierre fagonnee, 
 
 Svelte et pur il avait grandi 
 
 Informe encore en sa sveltesse, 
 
 Et j'attendis, 
 
 Les mains oisives et inquietes, 
 
 Pendant des jours, tournant la tete 
 
 A gauche, a droite, au moindre bruit, 
 
 Sans plus polir la panse ou lever le marteau. 
 
 L'eau 
 
 Coulait de la fontaine comme haletante. 
 
 Dans le silence 
 
 J'entendais, un a un, aux arbres du verger, 
 
 Les fruits tomber de branche en branche ; 
 
 Je respirais un parfum messager 
 
 De fleurs lointaines sur le vent; 
 
 Souvent 
 
 Je croyais qu'on avait parle bas, 
 
 Et, un jour que je revais — ne dormant pas — 
 
 J'entendis par dela les pres et la riviere 
 
 Chanter des flutes . . . 
 
 The quotation is not the complete poem; but 
 nothing would have been made clearer by the print- 
 ing of two pages of the same formlessness. De 
 
 .206.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 Regnier, its author, evidently grew tired of his own 
 liberty while waiting for a scene to carve on his vase, 
 for he fell back, some forty lines from the end, into 
 fine Alexandrines. It will be seen that these are Vers 
 Libre only in their disregard of some immaterial 
 technicalities, and in the neglect of alternation of 
 masculine and feminine rhymes. 
 
 Alors le verger vaste et le bois et la plaine 
 
 Tressaillirent d'un bruit etrange, et la fontaine 
 
 Coula plus vive avec un rire dans ses eaux; 
 
 Les trois Nymphes debout aupres des trois roseaux 
 
 Se prirent par la main et danserent ; du bois 
 
 Les faunes roux sortaient par troupes, et des voix 
 
 Chanterent par dela les arbres du verger, 
 
 Avec des flutes en eveil dans l'air leger. 
 
 La terre retentit du galop des centaures ; 
 
 II en venait du fond de l'horizon sonore, 
 
 Et Ton voyait, assis sur la croupe qui rue, 
 
 Tenant des thyrses tors et des outres ventrues, 
 
 Des satyres boiteux piques par des abeilles, 
 
 Et les bouches de crin et les levres vermeilles 
 
 Se baisaient, et la ronde immense et frenetique, 
 
 Sabots lourds, pieds legers, toisons, croupes, tuniques, 
 
 Tournaient eperdument autour de moi qui, grave, 
 
 Au passage, sculptais aux flancs gonfles du vase 
 
 Le tourbillonnement des forces de la vie. 
 
 From Jeux Rustiques et Divins. 
 
 This return to the Alexandrine, with a certain 
 amount of new freedom, with just a little contempt 
 
 • 207 .
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 for the shackles fitted by Malherbe and worn so com- 
 placently by the poets of three successive centuries, 
 is typical of the Vers Libre. The writers of French 
 verse, especially those of non-French blood or educa- 
 tion, wandered during the last two decades of the 
 last century as far from regularity as they dared 
 while yet calling their product verse; but most of 
 them kept in touch with familiar models. In all their 
 ventures on the waves of experiment, a line here and 
 there seems to prove that they had one eye on the 
 safe shore of Classic prosody, and especially upon 
 that beacon of all French versifiers, the Alexandrine. 
 The great twelve-syllable verse is, after all, the 
 surest and most natural resource in French, rhythmic 
 utterance. Its variety is infinite, its stability inde- 
 structible. 
 
 The writer of this too superficial essay has not 
 attempted to theorize, and will not permit himself 
 to prophesy. In the brief references to Vers Libre he 
 has confined himself to what is close enough to the 
 old norm to be called vers and yet independent 
 enough to deserve the adjective libre. Who can say 
 how much favor a new generation will grant to such 
 sectionally arranged prose as Paul Fort calls bal- 
 lades, and which he has collected in a recently 
 published Anthologie? Ballades in the accepted 
 French sense they surely are not, though they show 
 certainly some characteristics of the "fixed form" so 
 
 . 208.
 
 CONCERNING FRENCH VERSE 
 
 denominated. It may well be possible that the 
 French-speaking world will advance, or retrograde, 
 to a point where rhythmically divided speech will 
 satisfy as true verse has satisfied in the past. Or a 
 reaction may set in, and the demand will be for 
 nothing less than conformity to the old combination 
 of syllabic, accentual, and quantitative elements, 
 which it has been our effort to explain in the fore- 
 going pages. That the true essence of that combina- 
 tion, its real distinction from prose, has been made 
 clear is far from being claimed by the writer. 
 Greater than he have left this problem unsolved. 
 Stendhal said: "Has any imaginative critic ever 
 absolutely fathomed what is most essential in that 
 particular form we call style?" And Mr. Arthur 
 Symonds, quoting Stendhal in the English Review, 
 writes: "The problem has always been one of a kind 
 of spiritual, or unspiritual, vexation to all those 
 who have endeavoured to define it. One thing, how- 
 ever, is certain, that the rhythm of verse, that 
 rhythm which distinguishes it from prose, has never 
 been traced with any certainty to its origin." In 
 trying to show what its basis is in French, we have 
 succeeded in showing, perhaps, that rhythm in the 
 prosodic sense is a composite thing. 
 
 209
 
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