What Miss Crapsey has proved is that the difference between the rhythm of one English poet and another is in large part due to their differing vocabularies, predominantly monosyllabic, moderately polysyllabic, and highly polysyllabic. The reason for this is that whenever a poet uses words of more than two syllables he is using words which have each not only an accented syllable which can mark the beat but also a syllable carrying secondary accent-which may also be used to mark the beat or which may set up a new variety of music within the line. And this new factor alters all our bases for comparing the metrical side of one poet's work with that of another's. For instance "Mother Goose" used a vocabulary predominantly monosyllabic-many of her poems being wholly so. On the other hand a poet so admired for his technical dexterity as Swinburne is seen, through Miss Crapsey's tables, to work with a predominantly monosyllabic vocabulary; in "Chastelard," indeed, the percentage of monosyllables almost approaching that of "Mother Goose" the average occurrence of polysyllables in that poem being only 1.57. Now it is obvious that Swinburne's technical problems will be much simpler than those of such poets as Milton and Francis Thompson, who use an extremely polysyllabic vocabulary, running from seven to nine per cent of words of three syllables and over (and also a large proportion of dissyllables). Between these two extremes is the medium type of vocabulary, such as was used by Pope and Tennyson.

We can best see how these differences of vocabulary affect verse structure by quoting Miss Crapsey direct. After certain technical considerations, she proceeds:

Concisely given the issue is this: When the verse is in duple rhythm (rising) the occurrence of every word over two syllables in length except mid-stress trisyllables will, if the "normal" dissyllabic foot is to be kept, force the occurrence of a syllable carrying secondary word-accent in the verse-accent place: e.g.: "To whom | thus Michael. | Death thou hast seen." P. L. XI. 466.

And Miss Crapsey goes on to show how the occurrence or non-occurrence of secondary word accent affects other kinds of "feet."

As applied to actual poetic criticism her insight shows us how impossible it is to compare two poets who do not work in the same vocabulary. Tennyson cannot be compared, as has been attempted, with Milton:

Milton deals with the problems that I have indicated as inherent in a vocabulary of extreme structural complexity; his greater variety of word forms impose upon him all the difficulties of their manipulation, problems of weighting, of the management of the delicate and treacherous secondary accent syllables, and with these, since it is verse in duple rhythm, the question of variant feet. These things, if present for Tennyson, are far less acutely present and with the change in the basic condition of the vocabulary, the whole weighting and balance of the line change.

And Miss Crapsey takes an even more salient example from some criticism. of Professor Gilbert Murray. That scholar, writing of what English poetry may learn from the Greek, says that metrical rhythm is one thing. Swinburne, he says, can capture the sort of rhythm needed for professed imitations of the Greek, in such work as

She is cold and her habit is lowly. . .

After quoting the whole stanza, he says, "This has a strong clear rhythm, full of majesty and sweetness," and he goes on to compare unfavorably with it "the most admired lyrics in "Samson Agonistes":

God of our fathers, what is man?

and

This, this is he: softly a while

Let us not break in upon him.

Or do my eyes misrepresent? Can this be he,

That heroic, that renowned

Irresistible Samson, whom unarmed

No strength of man or fiercest wild beast could withstand?

And of this poetry Professor Murray says: "But surely it is clear that the rhythm is exceedingly obscure and utterly unlyrical in quality?"

As I have spoken already of Miss Crapsey's rare

Four Younger Women Poets

In a recent book dealing with native American poetic rhythms Mary Austin remarked that poetry was not a woman's game. It may be true that we have no major poets among women at the present day, but have we among men? Fortunately, poetry does not have to be major in order to be both enjoyable and important: enjoyable for many reasons and important because sincere and therefore illuminating. And of the actual poetry written in America to-day the younger women can point to as many technical triumphs as the younger men-for Frost and Robinson we may list as majors -and to an even more interesting revelation of personality.

Of course, the word "young" is used in a very relative sense. Edna St. Vincent Millay is a younger woman than Amy Lowell, but her first volume was published in 1917, while the first volume really characteristic of Amy Lowell was issued only two years earlier-although a volume of work in which Louis Untermeyer says "it is difficult to discover even the proverbial promise" was issued in 1912. But for the purposes of this article I may put Miss Lowell on the side of the elder poets, especially as her work is

in a category of its own, and group as the younger woman poets of importance Edna St. Vincent Millay, Genevieve Taggard, Louise Bogan, and Elinor Wylie. Obviously, I could consider others with perhaps as much justification as these, but the poets chosen, unlike some of the more "objective" of their sisters, unite in presenting a picture of the spiritual situation in America to-day of the young, sensitive, self-conscious woman-of such a woman in a civilization which has theoretically made room for her as a person but practically has not quite caught up to her-which does not understand her, and is often aghast at her actions, and often, too, callous to her sufferings.

Miss Millay's poetry began with the publication, while she was under twenty, of that remarkable poem, "Renascence" (1912), a concrete and earthy expression of what in paler forms has been dubbed "cosmic consciousness," although by now the very use of that phrase at all calls for apology. Since then she has staked out on the field of poetry wider claims than many of her more casual readers have been aware of. While her reputation rested largely on love poetry and on what might be called the poetry of mischief and light, such things as

My candle burns at both ends,