Metrical Composition Quotes

Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is opposed to science, and prose to meter. The proper and immediate object of science is the acquirement, or communication of truth; the proper and immediate object of poetry is the communication of immediate pleasure.

Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.

What is it about meter and cadence and rhythm that makes their makers mad?

I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of Beauty.

Well-written words are music.

Poetry was syllable and rhythm. Poetry was the measurement of breath. Poetry was time make audible. Poetry evoked the present moment; poetry was the antidote to history. Poetry was language free from habit.

Trochee trips from long to short; From long to long in solemn sort Slow Spondee stalks.

I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, "a long poem," is simply a flat contradiction in terms.

This is the feeling for syllable and rhythm, penetrating far below the conscious levels of thought and feeling, invigorating every word.

It may be safely affirmed that there neither is, nor can be, any essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition.... They both speak by and to the same organs; the bodies in which both of them are clothed may be said to be of the same substance, their affections are kindred, and almost identical, not necessarily differing even in degree; Poetry sheds no tears "such as Angels weep," but natural and human tears; she can boast of no celestial ichor that distinguishes her vital juices from those of prose; the same human blood circulates through the veins of them both.