RHYMES.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1413, 13 April 1912, Page 9

RHYMES.

Mr. Shorter (says a writer in the "Manchester Guardian") sums up the controversy on the rhyming of "eyes" and "Paradise" by saying that it is permissible where it is poetry that is being written and not so when it is mere empty verso. It is a conclusion of common sense. No doubt things arc only at their best when form ami substance are equally faultless, but every appreciative reader of poetry knows the relative importance of those two elements, and, where the inspiration is genuine and vigorous, is willing tn overlook rhymes far less authoritatively sanctioned than "eyes" and "Paradise." Discussions of this sort open up the wide question as to whether rhyme is a sufficient guide to pronunciation. It is a question of great interest to the student of phonetics, because rhyme is about the only guide he has to'enable him to judge lion- English in other times was pronounced. Some accordingly have strongly held to the adequacy of rhyme in pre-Aiigustan poets by alleging that words were so pronounced in their day, while others, holding a-contrary opinion) have set themselves to prove that an immense l)ody of rhymes presently in use are conventional or licentious. Probably a "via media" is. as usual, the safe position, and there arc two principles always operative which have the cffect. of making rhyme a very precarious guide to pro" nunciation. One of those is tradition. Poets are a conservative generation, and) in that scarcity of rhymes in English of which even Chaucer complained, would think it a hardship to be denied the use of those which their immediate predecessors employed. This was conspicuously so in the eighteenth century. Tho masters of the "correct" school had fised not only the type of poetrv, but the rhyme scheme. It words which they twinned seemed to us assonants, thj fault]

ua>, with our ears; "the delicate ears of a I opo or an Addison" could not have been at lault, and had settled the matter lor all time to come. Jn our time tradition when not united with rhvmes to !■!>*!.P" ! ns ,.! l '? s s, ™- v \ bnt to this 'lay tho u uiiuf is so universally pronounced L J"'*;. T 1 I,oetr} ' t0 mato w 'th "unK 11(1 that one ot the elements of tho " 1!lt nt a first reading 0110 had his couplet of, Swinburne's was its internal rhyme:— " "itp-cyod and poisonous-finned, sliarkT7„11 , a,ul serpentine-curled, "Oils, under the whitening wind of the future, the wave of tho world." ' Our poetry,' however, has a very largo pro?n!l "' ori S i"' 1 . 1 ' 01 ' rhvl1 "' to the ovo and 111 e supported by tradition and only en.7 t ' l °"!;i Tl " ls Ulc t'hfa sevcial sounds in 'love," "wove," and rhvmed ""«.«»-that the words rnjmecl. Ihoy do not do so now vofc examples: could be culled from almost any r ter of our time. What with trad?tional rhymes, rhymes to the eve imperfcct rhymes, and conventional rhvme= iutme inquirers as to how English spoken in our day who trust our poe ?v wilt often Ijo sadly out. P '