the pre-eminence which Coleridge and other writers have given to accent.
He conceived of a line of poetry as consisting of a definite number
of bars (or feet), each bar containing, in dactylic metre,
three equal "eighth notes", of which the first is accented,
or in iambic metre (which has the same "triple" time),
of one "eighth note", and one "quarter note", with the accent on the second.
Thus the accented syllable is not necessarily "longer" than the unaccented,
except as the rhythm happens to make it so. This idea is very fully developed
and with great wealth of curious Old English illustrations.
Under the designation of "tone-color" he treats very suggestively
of rhyme, alliteration, and vowel and consonant distribution,
showing how the recurrence of euphonic vowels and consonants
secures that rich variety of tone-color which music gives in orchestration.
The work thus breaks away from the classic grammarian's tables
of trochees and anapaests, and discusses the forms of poetry
in the terms of music; and of both tone-color and of rhythm he would say,
in the words of old King James, "the very touch-stone whereof is music."

Illustrations of these technical beauties of musical rhythm,
and vowel and consonant distribution, abound in Lanier's poetry.
Such is the "Song of the Chattahoochee", which deserves a place
beside Tennyson's "Brook". It strikes a higher key,
and is scarcely less musical. Such passages are numerous
in his "Sunrise on the Marshes", as in the lines beginning,

"Not slower than majesty moves,"

or the other lines beginning,

"Oh, what if a sound should be made!"