return of sound can give to the ear. Some critics have amused
themselves with the hope that here, in the laws and practices
regulating the audible cadence of words, may be found the first
principles of style, the form which fashions the matter, the
apprenticeship to beauty which alone can make an art of truth. And
it may be admitted that verse, owning, as it does, a professed and
canonical allegiance to music, sometimes carries its devotion so
far that thought swoons into melody, and the thing said seems a
discovery made by the way in the search for tuneful expression.


What thing unto mine ear
Wouldst thou convey,--what secret thing,
O wandering water ever whispering?
Surely thy speech shall be of her,
Thou water, O thou whispering wanderer,
What message dost thou bring?


In this stanza an exquisitely modulated tune is played upon the
syllables that make up the word "wandering," even as, in the poem
from which it is taken, there is every echo of the noise of waters
laughing in sunny brooks, or moaning in dumb hidden caverns. Yet
even here it would be vain to seek for reason why each particular
sound of every line should be itself and no other. For melody
holds no absolute dominion over either verse or prose; its laws,
never to be disregarded, prohibit rather than prescribe. Beyond
the simple ordinances that determine the place of the rhyme in
verse, and the average number of syllables, or rhythmical beats,
that occur in the line, where shall laws be found to regulate the