yousness, some whisper love
through every fibre of the heart, and some lead us in their holy calm
and unbroken order to the throne of God. Why is this? We need not look
in the region of the understanding for the philosophy of that which is
to be found only in the living tide of basic emotions. The pleasure we
receive from Rhythm is a feeling. Alternate accentuation and
non-accentuation are facts in the living organism of the universe; this
may be expressed, not explained. There is an order in the living
succession of musical sounds or poetic emotions, which order is
expressed by the words 'equality and proportion.' These things _are_.
What more can be said? Do comparisons help us? the waves in the eternal
ocean of vitality--the shuttle strokes of the ever-moving loom of
creation! Let us take it as it is, and rejoice in it. We cannot tell you
why we live--let us be glad that our life is music through every
heart-throb!

Rhythm is a species of natural but inarticulate language, in which the
_thought_ is never disengaged from the _feeling_; in language its aim
should be to awaken the _feeling_ properly attached to the thought it
modulates; it should be the _tune_ of the thought of the Poet. To write
a love song in alexandrines, an idyl in hexameters, would be to
incarnate the shy spirit of a girl in the brawny frame of a Hercules, to
incase the loving soul of a Juliet in a gauntleted Minerva. Genius and
deep sympathy with human nature can alone guide the Poet aright in this
delicate and difficult path; it lies too near the core of our
unconscious being to be susceptible of the trim regularity of rule--he
must trust his own intuitions while he studies with care what has
already been successfully done by our best poets. We may however remark
in passing that if the rhythm be abruptly broken without a corresponding
break in the flow of thought or feeling, the reader will be confused,
because the outward form has fallen into contradiction with its inner
soul, and he discerns the opposition, and knows not with which to
sympathize. Such contrarieties argue want of power or want of freedom in
the poet, who should never suffer the clanking of his rhythmical chains
to be heard. Such causeless breaks proceed from want of truth to the
subject, and prove a lack of the careful rendering of love in the
author. The poet must listen to the naive voice of nature as he moulds
his rhythms, for the ingenious and elaborate constructions of the