not, I think, by the use of any other. The license to rhyme at indefinite
intervals is counterbalanced, in the writing of all poets who have employed
this metre successfully, by unusual frequency in the recurrence of the same
rhyme. For information on the generally overlooked but primarily important
function of catalexis in English verse I refer such readers as may be
curious about the subject to the Essay printed as an appendix to the later
editions of my collected poems.

I do not pretend to have done more than very moderate justice to the
exceeding grace and dignity and the inexhaustible expressiveness of which
this kind of metre is capable; but I can say that I have never attempted to
write in it in the absence of that one justification of and prime
qualification for its use, namely, the impulse of some thought that
"voluntary moved harmonious numbers."

COVENTRY PATMORE.
HASTINGS, 1890.




CONTENTS


TO THE UNKNOWN EROS, ETC.


PROEM.