On Himself

"Trance" - Some Metrical and Other Points

Collected Poems (Centenary Edition, 1972), p. 572.

Q: Is it not the case that, in this metre¹, either one must keep a rather staccato movement, pausing with almost unbroken regularity at the end of each foot, or else risk the iambic pentameter approximation by the use of an easy and fluent movement, as in your very beautiful line,

Mute the body aureate with light,

that would seem least out of place if inserted amidst other iambic pentameters?

A: Possibly—though the line does not read to my ear very well as an iambic pentameter—the movement sounds then common and rather lame. It goes better as a trochaic rhythm. It is true that there is this dilemma and the whole skill will then be in

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avoiding the staccato effect, but that necessitates a very light movement.

I think the principle of this metre² should be to say a few very clear-cut things in a little space. At least it looks so to me at present—though a more free handling of the metre might show that the restriction was not justifiable.

I had chosen this metre—or rather it came to me and I accepted it—because it seemed to me both brief and easy, so suitable for an experiment. But I find now that it was only seemingly easy and in fact very difficult. The ease with which I wrote it only came from the fact that by a happy inspiration the right rhythm for it came into my consciousness and wrote itself out by virtue of the rhythm being there. If I had consciously experimented I might have stumbled over the same difficulties as have come in your way.

The Bird of Fire³ was written on two consecutive days and afterwards revised. The Trance at one sitting—it took only a few minutes. You may have the date as they were both completed on the same day and sent to you the next.

Q: In the line—

Halo-moon of ecstasy unknown—

is the "o" assonance satisfactory, or does the ear feel the two sounds come too close or for some reason are too insistent?

A: It seems to me that there is sufficient space between to prevent the assonance from being too prominent; it came like that and I kept it because the repetition and the prolongation of the full "o" sound seemed to me to carry in it a certain unexpressed (and inexpressible) significance.

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Q: What exactly does "Halo-moon" signify? In line 2 there was the concrete physical moon ringed with a halo. Is the suggestion of line 10 that a glory of indefinable presence is imaged by a lunar halo—the moon as a distinct object now being swallowed up in the halo? My difficulty is that if it is "halo" simply it cannot be a "moon" as well. But possibly the compound "halo-moon" is elliptical for "moon with its surrounding halo".

A: Well, it is of course the "moon with its halo", but I wanted to give a suggestion if not of the central form being swallowed up in the halo, at least of moon and halo being one ecstatic splendour as when one is merged in ecstasy.

Q: The last line—

Ocean self enraptured and alone—

I took as meaning "Self, who art symbolised by this ocean", since otherwise you would probably have written "self-enraptured"?

A: Yes, that is right.