I think that technically you'd have to say
that syllabics is a meter, but one which
is usually inaudible in English. Unlike
accentual-syllabics, it can sound like just
about anything, from song to prose. Thomas'
"In My Craft or Sullen Art" is a highly
melodic example of syllabics. Tim admires
Auden's "Atlantis" (which I like well enough)
but I'd say that his most ravishing sound in
syllabics is the elegy for Freud, in alcaic
stanzas. There's probably one exception to
the assertion that we don't hear syllabics
per se in English, and that would be short
rhymed lines. For example, Elizabeth Daryush
who was the great pioneer in syllabics. Here
is one of her poems in which I think the meter
can be clearly heard:
Above the grey down
gather, wan, the glows;
relieved by leaden
gleams a star-gang goes;
in the dark valley
here and there enters
a spark, laggardly,
for the faint watchers
that were there all night--
factory, station
and hospital light...
Tired of lamp, star, sun,
bound to my strait bed
uncurtained, I see
heaven itself law-led,
earth in slavery.
Another beautiful example of the meter, by
J. V. Cunningham:
I write only to say this,
In a syllabic dryness
As inglorious as I feel:
Sometime before drinking time
For the first time in some weeks
I heard of you, the casual
News of a new life, silence
Of unconfronted feeling
And maples in the slant sun
The gay color of decay.
Was it unforgivable,
My darling, that you loved me?
And many more, including the syllabic stanzas
of Henri Coulette's "War of the Secret Agents"
But I would certainly agree that the re-
sources of syllabics are very meager, com-
pared to what can be done with accentual or
accentual-syllabic.
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