This book analyses the nature of verse composed in English and the versifying craft of some of the better English poets.
As so many people use the words verse and poetry indiscriminately, assuming that they mean much the same thing, I should like first of all to discuss terminology. Verse is a technical term: poetry an evaluative term. Let me explain what I mean by this.
For those of us whose first language is English, our earliest experience of English is through speech: we learn to speak when we are babies. Speech is a technical term and designates spontaneous linguistic utterance. In our own culture most people in the past never learnt to read, and for them the only language was the spoken language. (There are still many people throughout the world who cannot read, and are therefore deprived of many of the benefits of a modern education; but we should recognize that among peoples for whom written language is not a part of daily life, linguistic skill is just as important as it is to us, while memory is in general superior to that of lazy literates in our own country: the two together encourage a healthy tradition of oral literature.)
When we deliberately compose language to be read by others or by ourselves, either silently, as with a novel, or aloud, as in lectures or sermons, we usually create prose. The essential grammatical shape of prose is very similar to that of speech, as one might expect, but there are some differences, as we learn laboriously in English lessons at school when we struggle to compose essays or formal reports. Prose, too, is a technical term: it designates language that is written according to certain grammatical rules, in which sentences are complete and every part of the utterance is verbally explicit (no part of the meaning being conveyed purely by gesture, facial expression, or intonation, as so often happens in spontaneous speech).
Verse is also a technical term. Now, because we frequently read verse in print, we tend to think of it as being a genre of written language, just as prose is. This is a false assumption. Verse, like prose, derives directly from speech: it is a special, patterned variation on the possible forms of spoken English. Poetry is the word that we normally apply to the kind of verse that we admire, or think of as having some kind of special value, or lasting quality. However, we use the word poetry not only for verse, but also for certain kinds of prose, particularly rhythmical prose, such as that of the Authorized Version of the English Bible, or passages in some of our favourite novels, especially those that sound good when read aloud. Poetry, then, is an evaluative term: it suggests that what is being read or listened to has some kind of artistic or lasting value; it is a term purely of judgement, of aesthetic evaluation. Poetry is therefore not a technical term. We can usually agree as to what is prose or verse, but we argue interminably about whether certain compositions by children in class or by many modern so-called poets are actually poetry as opposed to mere verse. And what about nursery rhymes: are they poetry? Some people think they are: others are sure that they are not. There is clearly a large area of possible disagreement here. Let us remember, then, that whereas speech, verse and prose are technical terms, poetry is an evaluative term, and in the first part of this book poetry will not be considered further.
I shall now begin to examine the nature of English verse.