The exquisite poetry of the bell-ringer's art: A column by Poetry Correspondent Maurice Spillane

Over a pint my friend, Des, and I encouraged him to dig deep into the maths of bell ringing, the ringers moving from change to change, the conductor calling the changes.
Colin showed examples from Fabian Stedman’s change map published in Tintinnalogia in 1668. You can see how the change moves through the pattern of five bells like a slow river. Imagine the conductor feeling the sound intuitively, and you’ll get how a poet feels the internal rhyme of a poem.
With internal rhyming, not just at the end of the line, you know when you read aloud whether it works. If you underline the words, the pattern is as beautiful as Stedman’s map.
Long poems with the sameness of dum-de-dum and line-end rhymes can become very tedious. Take Longfellow’s poem 'Song of Hiawatha' which runs to about 150 pages and you’ll see what I mean:

From the brow of Hiawatha
Gone was every trace of sorrow,
As the fog from off the water,
As the mist from off the meadow.

Years ago, a friend and mentor, Mimi Khalvati, enjoyed a poem I’d read but said it had an internal clanger – so appropriate to this article! We played with the poem and only changed one word. I’ve never forgotten that.
Feel the internal rhyme yourself in Edgar Alan Poe’s classic 'The Raven.'

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“‘Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door —
Only this, and nothing more.”

Christopher Lee reads the poem beautifully on YouTube.

www.mauricespillane.co.uk

What’s on: www.poetryswindon.com
 

Subscribe to The Link