The beat of the healthful heart is in unison with the feelings of the
hour. Agitation makes it fitful and broken, excitement accelerates, and
sorrow retards it. And this fact should be the model for all poetical
and musical rhythm.
To show how readily we associate feelings with different orders of
sound, let us suppose we are passing the night somewhere, where a
stranger, utterly unknown to us, occupies a room from which we can hear
the sound of his footsteps. Suppose that through the tranquil hours of
the night we hear his measured tread falling in equally accented and
monotonous spondees, it is certain that a quick imagination will at once
associate this deliberate tread with the state of mind in the unknown
from which it will believe it to proceed, and will immediately suggest
that the stranger is maturing some great design of heavy import to his
future peace.
Should the character of the spondaic tread suddenly change, should the
footsteps become rapid, eager, and broken, we look upon the term of
meditation and doubt as over, the resolve as definitely fixed, and the
unknown as restlessly longing for the hour of its fulfilment.
When we hear steps resembling dactyls, anapaests, and choriambs thrown
hurriedly together, broken by irregular pauses, we begin to build a
whole romance on the steps of the stranger; we infer from them moments
of grave deliberation; the languor consequent upon overwrought thought;
renewed effort; resolve; alternations of passion; hope struggling with
despair; until all at last seems merged in impatient longing for the
hour of anticipated victory.
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