Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 1. Poetry and its Creation
Section 3. Poetic Technique
English Metres

Some Questions of Scansion [2]

You have taken an anapaestic metre varied by an occasional iambus or spondee. But you have inserted sometimes four syllables in a foot instead of three — this is not allowed in normal anapaestic verse which is always and never . But I have accepted this and put occasionally an amphibrach foot instead of as Arjava and myself are trying to vary the normal metre in this way.

In ordinary English scansion no account is taken of naturally short and long syllables. All unaccented syllables are treated as short, all accented syllables as long, thus bright-|nighted day | [in a poem by the correspondent] would count metrically as bright-|nighted day | in the scansion, but the variation of natural long and natural short syllables is a very important element in the beauty or failure of beauty of the rhythm as opposed to mere scansion of metre. So I have indicated the naturally long and short syllables — if you study it, you may get an idea of this important element in the rhythm.

18 October 1933