Star In the West TNR.pdf - The Hermetic Library

The extra half-step in “shuddering” in place of discordantly jarring on the
metre produces a keener sense of agony in the reader’s mind than a word
which scanned correctly would do.
In the next passage, taken from “Tannhäuser,” we find the introduction of a
spondee carrying with it a curious sensation of slowness:
Chaos, a speck; and space, a span;
Ruinous cycles fallen in,
And Darkness on the Deep of Time.
Murmurous voices call and climb;
Faces, half-formed, arise; and He
Looked from the shadow of His throne,
The curtain of Eternity;*
*Tannhäuser, vol. i, p. 251. (The italics are mine.)
whilst in the last verse of “The Palace of the World” the sudden dropping of
a whole foot produces with it a sudden sense of finality:
Thine be the kingdom! Thine the power!
The glory triply thine!
Thine, through Eternity’s swift hour,
Eternity, thy shrine—
Yea, by the holy lotus-flower,
Even mine!*
*The Temple of the Holy Ghost, vol. i, p. 205.
Further on in the same series of poems a sudden whirring sense of madness
is produced by introducing the word “lunatic” into an otherwise regular line:
Silence, deep silence. Not a shudder stirs
The vast demesne of unforgetful space,
No comet’s lunatic rush: no meteor whirs,
No star dares breathe. . .*
*The Temple of the Holy Ghost, vol. i, p. 209.
Again, in such lines as: