In A Year

Never any more, While I live, Need I hope to see his face As before. Once his love grown chill, Mine may strive: Bitterly we re-embrace, Single still.

Was it something said, Something done, Vexed him? was it touch of hand, Turn of head? Strange! that very way Love begun: I as little understand Love's decay.

When I sewed or drew, I recall How he looked as if I sung, --Sweetly too. If I spoke a word, First of all Up his cheek the color sprung, Then he heard.

Sitting by my side, At my feet, So he breathed but air I breathed, Satisfied! I, too, at love's brim Touched the sweet: I would die if death bequeathed Sweet to him.

"Speak, I love thee best!" He exclaimed: "Let thy love my own foretell!" I confessed: "Clasp my heart on thine Now unblamed, Since upon thy soul as well Hangeth mine!"

Was it wrong to own, Being truth? Why should all the giving prove His alone? I had wealth and ease, Beauty, youth: Since my lover gave me love, I gave these.

That was all I meant, --To be just, And the passion I had raised, To content. Since he chose to change Gold for dust, If I gave him what he praised Was it strange?

Would he loved me yet, On and on, While I found some way undreamed --Paid my debt! Gave more life and more, Till all gone, He should smile "She never seemed Mine before.

"What, she felt the while, Must I think? Love's so different with us men!" He should smile: "Dying for my sake-- White and pink! Can't we touch these bubbles then But they break?"

Dear, the pang is brief, Do thy part, Have thy pleasure! How perplexed Grows belief! Well, this cold clay clod Was man's heart: Crumble it, and what comes next? Is it God?

Why is "Herve Riel" in trochaic movement? It is heroic; why not then iambic? The poem opens in a mood of anxiety, a state of suspense, a fear of the certain loss of the fleet. When hope revives and Herve Riel is introduced in the words,

"For up stood, for out stepped, for in struck amid all these,"

we have a line of mixed anapestic and iambic feet, expressive of resolution, courage, and confidence; so with the first and second lines of the sixth stanza expressing indignation at the pilots; also in much of his speech to the admirals.

If the poet had led us sympathetically to identify ourselves with Herve Riel's resolution and endeavor, the metre would have been anapestic or iambic, but he gives the feeling of admiration for Herve Riel and we are made to contemplate how easily he performed his great deed, and hence the prevailing trochaic movement is one of the charms of the poem.

Criticism of this poem, such as I have heard, reveals a lack of appreciation of the dramatic spirit of metre. The trochaic delicately expresses the emotional feeling, admiration, and tenderness for the forgotten hero, as well as the anxiety and realization of danger in the first parts of the poem. The change to the iambic in the central part of the poem only proves the real character of the trochaic feet, and, in fact, accentuates their spirit. The trochee seems in general to indicate an outpouring of emotion or sudden burst of feeling too strong for control. Many of the most tender and prayerful hymns have this foot. It expresses also, at times, a sense of uneasiness or restlessness.

The reader must take these statements, however, as mere suggestions, for the very first poem written in this metre that he reads may give expression to a different spirit. So complex, so mysterious, is the metric expression of feeling, that no one poem can be made a standard for another.

The iambic foot, more than any other, expresses controlled passion,--passion expressed with deliberation. It implies resolution, confidence, or the heroic carrying out of an intention. While the trochee suggests the bursting out of feeling against the will, the iambic may suggest the spontaneous cumulation of emotion under the dominion of will with a definite purpose or conscious realization of a situation. The iambic can express passion controlled for an end, the trochee seems rather to float with the passion or be thrust forward by waves or bursts of feeling, which the will is trying to hold back.

Note the predominant metric movement of "Rabbi Ben Ezra," and how it expresses the confidence and noble conviction of the venerable Rabbi.

Why is "The Last Ride Together" iambic? Because no other metre could so well express the nobility of the hero, his endurance, his refusal to yield to despair or become antagonistic, his self-control, and the preservation of his hopefulness when all his "life seemed meant for fails."