What are some of the typical features of a good lyric poem, one that is fit for a hymn? I dont think we can answer that unless we understand a few things about the auditory qualities of English poetry. One of those, important for hymns, is rhyme. Now, English is poor in rhymes, because we have a tremendous number of vowel and consonant combinations that can end a word: paint, latched, barbs, law. So our poets have admitted near-rhymes, when they involve closely related “dark” vowels, or sight-rhymes, or consonants whose only difference is in the voicing: blood, good; rise, ice; breath, heath. Good poets writing for songs, though, will be chary of introducing “new” or unexpected near-rhymes, because they strike a discord just where you dont want one, at the end of a line or a verse. A workmanlike poet will give us rhymes that arent surprising or strained, but that also do not themselves deliver any meaning. A poor poets lines are determined by the rhyme rather than the other way around. But a good poet uses rhyme as productive of meaning, by linking words and the lines they cap which otherwise wouldnt be linked. In other words, rhyme is not for decoration. Its woven into the songs structure of meaning, and can provide a sense of intellectual or emotional or imagistic resolution, or climax. To see how this works, look at the rhyming triplets in the hymn For All the Saints. Each line is iambic pentameter, of a pretty muscular sort – it is not sing-song. Now, it is not easy to write in English in that form. You need three rhymes, without intervening lines. You have to conceive each triplet as a whole, a single miniature work of art. The finest example of it in English is Herberts poem “The Sacrifice,” but this poem is very fine in its own right. The thing about the rhyming triplet is that the third line is natural for building to a climax, or for a surprising and even ironic turn; we dont “expect” the triplet. Take this stanza for example: O blest communion, fellowship divine! We feebly struggle, they in glory shine, Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine. Dont be deceived by the simplicity of the finale. It completes the stanza perfectly. The first line is an exclamation and a declaration of fact. We are in communion with the saints who have gone before us, and this communion, this fellowship, is blest and is divine. The second line seems to retreat from that judgment, because obviously we are not saints yet. The key words in that line are the pronouns, strongly stressed for rhetorical emphasis: WE feebly struggle, THEY in glory shine. That might suggest that WE and THEY are not really in fellowship. But the third line resolves the issue. And the third line is essentially made up of pronouns: ALL are ONE in THEE, for ALL are THINE. The final word, THINE, gives us the principle that makes the communion possible and that reduces to insignificance the tremendous chasm that seems to divide us in our struggle from the saints in their glory. We are one, says the poet to the Lord, because and only because we are THINE. All of the stanzas in the poem, after the first, work in this way, and it is all the more powerful when there seems to be nothing more to say after the final line: From earths wide bounds, from oceans farthest coast, Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host, Singing to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!
Posted on: Sat, 17 Jan 2015 04:00:27 +0000
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