Henry Kendall’s poem Bell-Birds does a similar thing. It transports the reader
(and the listener) to a mountain stream running through an almost magical place
that enchants all of the senses including the ear. It is impossible to read this
poem and not suffer sensory inebriation. The tone is set in the first verse:
By channels of coolness the echoes are calling,
And down the dim gorges I hear the creek falling:
It lives in the mountain where moss and the sedges
Touch with their beauty the banks and the ledges.
Through breaks of the cedar and sycamore bowers
Struggles the light that is love to the flowers;
And, softer than slumber, and sweeter than singing,
The notes of the bell-birds are running and ringing.
A contrast in feeling comes from Catullus’s poem written on or his visit to his
brother’s grave:
Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus
advenio has miseras, frater, ad inferias, …
accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu,
atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale.
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This translates as:
Through many nations and many seas have I come
To carry out these wretched funeral rites, brother,
Accept this sad gift, drenched in a brother’s tears
And into eternity, my beloved brother, hail and farewell.
As we read its lines we can feel the poet sobbing. This is achieved by the
metre that Catullus has used.
Prose also has rhythm, which is the musical score. In prose, however, the
rhythm is not as formal as that in poetry. This lack of formality tends to dilute
its intensity but at the same time widen its possibilities. Good writing will use
rhythm to unite meaning and feeling. As John Kenneth Galbraith put it so well:
“[B]e aware of the music [and] the symphony of words, and [by this means]
make written expression acceptable to the ear”.
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Several factors obviously affect rhythm –
the length of vowels, words and
sentences, the order of words, whether words are derived from Anglo-Saxon,
Latin or Greek, whether sounds are stressed or unstressed, and consonance,
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Catullus 101
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“JK Galbraith on the art of good writing” (2006) http://maven. See:
wordpress.com/2006/06/30/galbraith-on-on-the-art-of-good-writing/
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