iate phrasing, effective
arrangement, and subtle suggestiveness, but it also makes use of certain
devices of language such as rhythm, rhyme, etc., which, though they may
occur in writings that would be classed as prose, are characteristic of
poetry. Much depends upon the ideas that poetry contains; for mere
nonsense, though in perfect rhyme and rhythm, is not poetry. But it is not
the idea alone which makes a poem beautiful; it is the form as well. The
merely trivial cannot be made beautiful by giving it poetical form, but
there are many poems containing ideas of small importance which please us
because of the perfection of form. We enjoy them as we do the singing of
the birds or the murmuring of the brooks. In fact, poetry is inseparable
from its characteristic forms. To sort out, re-arrange, and paraphrase
into second-class prose the ideas which a poem contains is a profitless
and harmful exercise, because it emphasizes the intellectual side of a
work which was created for the purpose of appealing to our aesthetic
sense.

+108. Rhythm.+--There are several forms characteristic of poetry, by the
use of which its beauty and effectiveness are enhanced. Of these, rhythm
is the most prominent one, without which no poetry is possible. In its
widest sense, rhythm indicates a regular succession of motions, impulses,
sounds, accents, etc., producing an agreeable effect. Rhythm in poetry
consists of the recurrence of accented and unaccented syllables in regular
succession. In poetry, care must be taken to make the accented syllable of
a word come at the place where the rhythm demands an accent. The regular
recurrence of accented and unaccented syllables produces a harmony which
appeals to our aesthetic sense and thus enhances for us the beauty of
poetry. Read the following selections so as to show the rhythm:--

1.

We were crowded in the cabin;
Not a soul would dare to speak;
It was midnight on the waters
And a storm was on the deep.

--James T. Fields.

2.

Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.

--Tennyson.

3.

Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor

--Poe.

4.

Sweet and low, sweet and low,
Wind of the western sea,
Low, low, breathe and blow,
Wind of the western sea!

Over the rolling waters go,
Come from the dy