Abstract
The Melody ofthe Spoken Word: A Study ofJames Still's Hounds on the Mountain by John Napier Or may the heart's breath on the slender reed Sing bright virelays to match the oriole?— The tulip tree the lyre that one must heed When the dulcimers are gone, when afternoons attend The silver underleaf of poplars in the wind? Sadly enough there is not a great deal of modern poetry that one wishes to go back to and read again as one would go back and play a lasting tune—for the sake of hearing its melody again. A few of Frost's poems, De la Mare's, a few of Yeats's, have this kind of music. But for the most part, even those modern poems that interest us most do so for reasons other than their intrinsic music. The music I am speaking of is found in the finest lyrics of our language. I think of Shakespeare's songs, of Burns, of Herrick, and of Jonson, his master. And I think that such music is notably allied with the melody of the spoken word. It is not the cold impersonal music of the tone poem, but is rather speech on the verge of becoming song—words for setting to music with the tune already implied, as in Thomas Campion's "Follow Your Saint." 56 Several of the poems in Hounds on the Mountain have such implicit melody. "Mountain Dulcimer," with its unique metrical pattern, resembling dipodic verse but made on a pattern of threes instead of twos, has this kind of song: The dulcimer sings from fretted maple throat Of the doe's swift poise, the fox's fleeting step And music of hounds upon the outward slope Stirring the night, drumming the ridge-strewn way, The anvil's strength . . . and the silence after That aches and cries unhushed into the day. From the dulcimer's breast sound hunting horns Strong as clenched hands upon the edge of death, The creak of saddle-bags, of oxen yoke and thongs, Wild turkey's treble, dark sudden flight of crows, Of unshod hoofs . . . and the stillness after, Bitter as salt drenching the tongue of pain: And of the lambs crying, breath of the lark, Long drinks from piggins hard against the lips; And with hoarse singing, raw as hickory shagbark, The foal's anxiety is woven with the straining wedge And the wasp's anger . . . and the quiet after For the carver of maple on a keen blade's edge. The basic pattern, near but not too near to the dance, is used in almost its full range by James Still. He varies the position of the caesura and subdues the regularity of trochaic phrasing until it becomes a kind of chant in "Child in the Hills": Where on these hills are tracks a small foot made, Where rests the echo of his voice calling to the crows In sprouting corn? Here are tall trees his eyes Have measured to their tops, here lies fallow earth Unfurrowed by terracing plows these sleeping years. Here flow the waters of Carr before his darkened door. Or he disciplines it most severely until it achieves its perfection in the elegance of the title poem: Slow the dull fulcrum, slow the arched leanings Of hill on hill and witless lifting of stark eyes To craven stone. White the wet lattice of morning Over dusty drums, and keen the agony of dry roots Questing beneath the earth. 57 Lean as brown straws The hounds of day tread out thickets of darkness, Damp the grasses their bodies have brushed in passing, Thinner than fly-wings, heavier than words in a cavern, Wilder than thoughts creaming the tongue unspoken. Hounds on the mountain . . . Grey and swift spinning the quarry shall turn At the cove's ending, at the slow day's breaking, And lave the violent shadows with her blood. The pattern achieves its perfection as pattern here, but song has been subdued under the stress of intellect. "Child in the Hills" occupies a middle ground between the pure lyric quality of "Mountain Dulcimer" and the more abstract "Hounds on the Mountain." Still's mastery of song...
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