Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/251

 The Rythmical Line 245 expression, could go to the very limit of rhythmic-melodic possi- bilities. But might not poetry have gone farther in diffenrenta- tion of rhythm than it actually has done. To be sure, there is a strong tendency in this direction in the free rhythms of the ode, and one might surmise that it is largely the desire for greater internal variation and flexibility of rhythm, that underlies the experiments of the new movement of free verse, a striving toward more subtle and diversified rhythms, intimately corre- sponding to the changing courses of emotion. Now, the rhythmical line of poetry is not only a rhythmic- melodic series of sound, for then it would be pure music, not poetry; but it a rhythmical group of words expressing ideas. Under this aspect, the law of the span of consciousness again comes into the foreground as the decisive factor. For now it becomes specifically a question of the capacity of the mind to grasp a series of ideational elements, of focalizing the attention on an ideational complex of a certain extent. As Wundt points out, music and poetry use the aid of rhythmical forms in the formation of easily comprehended ideational series. The poet has something to tell and wants to be readily understood. He therefore instinctively makes the sentence, expressing an idea or image coincide as nearly as possible with the rhythmical series of accents, the same law of mental focalization, and grasp or measure of comprehension governing the one as well as the other. At this point the psychology of direct introspection affords the easiest means of verification. Mental self-examination shows that a relatively short series of ideational units comes into immediate consciousness, then sinks below the limen of distinct consciousness as a new one takes its place. This process is going on continually in our consciousness. The attention is momentarily concentrated on one idea, and passes from one to the other with only so much contextual consciousness as is necessary to refer and relate one group to the preceding and following groups. To be sure, the highly trained and unusually gifted mind is capable of exerting itself to exercise more complex intellectual functions, e.g. in the comprehension of involved per- iods of difficult writing. But poetry, by its very nature, is not the form for difficult mental processes, and does not address itself exclusively, nor even mainly, to intellectuals. The dismal