>Craig,

Just an anecdote as evidence.  My English teacher, one Muriel McCarthy,
made the Vale of Gondo passage in Wordsworth's 'The Prelude' light up for us
all in showing how the rhythmic climax was built up by the combination of
grammatical patterning and phonemic repetition:

                                        The brook and road
Were fellow-travellers in this gloomy strait,
And with them did we journey several hours
At a slow pace.  The immeasurable height
Of woods decaying never to be decayed,
The stationary blasts of waterfalls,
And in the narrow rent at every turn
Winds thwarting winds, bewildered and forlorn,
The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky,
Black drizzling crags that spake by the way-side
As if a voice were in them, the sick sight
And giddy prospect of the raving stream,
The unfettered clouds and region of the Heavens,
Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light --
Were all like workings of one mind, the features
Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree;
Characters of the great Apocalypse,
The types and symbols of Eternity,
Of first, and last, and midst, and without end.

I need not before the readers of the ATEG single out all the Noun Phrases as
she did for us, both those occupying the Subject position (before 'Were all
. . . '), and those occupying the position of Object of the Preposition
'like' (forming the succession of similes). Once she had established this
grammatical patterning for us, she drew attention to the rhythmic bonds both
within each phrase as a unit and across the phrases.

For example, WITHIN EACH PHRASE:  'iMMEASurable . . . NEVer', 'immeasuraBle
. . . Be', 'DECAYing . . . DECAYed';  and 'Were all like Workings of One
mind' (she was keen to point out that the word 'one' began with a 'W'
sound);  and, in the last two lines 'Types . . . ETerniTy . . .firsT. . .
LasT. . . MidsT . . .withouT, as well as 'OF . . .OF', 'AND . . . AND . . .
AND . . . AND', and 'firST . . .laST . . . MidST' (she did not leave out
here the echo of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' V, 165 -- 'Him first, Him last,
Him midst and without end!').  We were set to find the bonds inside the
other Noun Phrases.

And ACROSS PHRASES:  'waterFALLS . . . THWARting', 'stationaRY . . . NaRROW
. . . RENT . . EveRY', 'toRRENTS . . . ROCKS', 'CLEAR . . . CLOSE . . .
CRAGS . . . SpaKE';  and many more.

And then, the effect of climax achieved in the last lines, first, by the
progressive shortening of the Noun Phrases (from 'Tumult and peace' onwards)
up to the climax's beginning at 'workings of one mind', and then, after the
forceful  'blossoms upon one tree'  ('blOssoms upON ONe'), the progressive
slowing down, each phrase sharply strengthened with more alliteration,
assonance, and (combining them) with word repetition.  She had already shown
us the same pattern in music (the grand climax at the end of the first part
of Vaughan Williams' 'Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis', where
increasing rapidity before the climax is succeeded by a powerful
decelerando).

All of this was preparatory to discussing why such feeling should have been
aroused by these sights -- why the blasts of the waterfalls were
'stationary', and what metaphorical force this could have;  why the crags
'spake by the wayside', why the sight of the stream was 'sick', and why it
'raved', why the clouds were 'unfettered', why the emphasis upon the word
'one' at the climax, and so on.

The recognition of the grammatical structure, which was where she began her
analysis, was essential to all this, pedagogically as well as poetically.

Edmond


Dr. Edmond Wright
3 Boathouse Court
Trafalgar Road
Cambridge
CB4 1DU
England

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Website: http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/elw33/
Phone [00 44] (0)1223 350256

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