One of the novelties included in our experiments was the teaching of metrics, hitherto reserved for high schools. The love shown by children for poetry, their exquisite sensitiveness to rhythm, led me to suspect that the native roots of poetry might be present in little children. I suggested to Miss Maria Fancello, a teacher of literature in the high schools and my colleague, to attempt such an experiment. She began with children of different ages, and, together, we succeeded in discovering a highly interesting department of education, the object of which might be to give the mass of the people, prepared for life in the primary schools, the basic elements of literary appreciation, thus opening a new source of pleasure calculated also to increase general enlightenment. A populace capable of enjoying poetry, of judging the beauty of verse, and hence of coming in contact with the spirits of our greatest poets, would be something quite different to the masses we new know. To find the like we have to imagine the people of ancient story, who talked in poetry and moved their bodies to the rhythm, thus laying the foundations of refined civilization.

It is not our intention to describe in detail all we did in these experiments. It will be sufficient to summarize the results, which may suggest useful material end methods to others.

As soon as the children are somewhat advanced in reading, poetry, which they loved so much in "Children's House," may be included in the materials offered in partial satisfaction of their insatiable desire to read. It is best to begin with poems composed of stanzas of different lengths, the stanzas being printed at easily noticeable intervals from each other. The lines may be counted, in teaching the two new words "stanza" and "line." The process involved is a recognition of "objects," suggesting the first exercise in reading, where the children put names on things; though here the situation is much simpler. At the same time we have the exercise of counting the lines. In short, it is a review exercise of the greatest simplicity.

The counting of the lines leads at once to the identification of such groups as the couplet, quatrain, octave, etc. But little time is spent on such a crude detail. The little ones almost immediately become interested in the rhyme. The first step is the recognition of rhyming syllables which are underlined with colored pencils, using a different color for each rhyme. Seven-year-olders take the greatest delight in this work, which is too simple to arouse interest in children of eight or nine. Those of seven do such work about as quickly as those of ten, the speed of the younger children being due apparently to their enthusiasm, the slowness of the older to their lack of interest. We may note in passing that these exercises furnish tests of absolute exactness as to rapidity of work. Children of eight are able to go one step beyond marking the rhymes with colored pencils. They can use the more complicated device of marking lines with the letters of the alphabet: aa, bb, cc, etc. Marking with numbers to the left the lines in their order, and the rhymes with letters to the right, we get a specimen result as follows:

(Translation: "Wandering swallow, as you sit there on my balcony each morning, singing to me your tearful song, what is it you are trying to tell me in your language, wandering swallow?")

This brings out the difference between the alternating rhyme (a, b, a, b) and the couplet (c, c), as well as the morphology of the stanza.

In reading the lines over and over again to work out the rhyme scheme, the children spontaneously begin to catch the tonic accents. Their readiness in this respect is a matter of common observation. In fact, in ordinary schools, the teachers are continually struggling against the "sing-song" developed by children in reading poetry. This "sing-song" is nothing more nor less that stress on the rhythmic movement.

On one occasion, one of our children, a little boy, had been spending some time over a number of decasyllabic lines. While waiting in the corridor for the doors to open at dismissal time, he suddenly began to walk up and down "right-about-facing" at every three steps and saying aloud: "tatatÁ, tatatÁ, tatatÁtta," right-about-face, then "tatatÁ, tatatÁ, tatatÁtta." Each step was accompanied by a gesture in the air with his little clenched fist. This tot was marching to the verse rhythm, just as he would have marched to music. It was a case of perfectly interpretative "gymnastic rhythm." His gestures fell on the three tonic accents of the Italian decasyllable, the right-about marked the end of the "verse"—the "turn" in the line, which he indicated by "turning" himself around to begin over again.

When the children have reached such a stage of sensory development, they have no difficulty in recognizing the tonic accents. For this purpose, we have prepared sheets with poems written in a clear hand. The children mark with a neatly drawn accent the letter on which the rhythmic accent falls. The material should be systematically presented. We found from experience that the children first discover the accents in long lines made up of even-numbered syllables (parisyllabic lines), where the accents recur at regular intervals and are clearly called for both by sense, word accent and rhythm. We were able to establish the following sequence for various Italian lines, which present a graduated series of difficulties to the child in recognizing the accents:

1. Decasyllables: example:

(Translation: "A trumpet call sounds to the right; a trumpet calls answers to the left; all around the earth shakes with the charge of horses and men. Here a standard is broken out to the breeze; there another advances waving; here a line of troops appears, there another rushing against it.")

2. Dodecasyllables: example:

(Translation: "Ruello, Ruello, as fast as you can! O storm-winds of heaven, lend us your wings; my loved one is lying near death; onward, onward, onward, Ruello!")

3. Eight syllable lines (ottonario): example:

(Translation: "O deserted wood! To your shade the sorrowing heart comes to find some rest in your cool silence.")

4. Six syllable lines (senario): example:

(Translation: "Radiant with hope, the latest comer treads on the ashes of a dead world, pursuing the glowing aspirations of ages not yet ripe.")

Note: In the above selections the vowels in broad-faced type have been marked with an accent by the child, to indicate the rhythmic beat.

We found, on the other hand, that greater difficulty is experienced by the children in lines where the syllables are in odd-numbers (imparisyllabics), the hardest of the Italian lines being the hendecasyllable, which is a combination of the seven syllable and the five syllable line, fused together with all their great varieties of movement.

We established the following gradation of difficulties:

1. Seven syllable line (settenario): example:

(Translation: "Now already flowery Spring returns; again the lovely zephyrs dance amidst the grass and blossoms.")

2. Five syllable line (quinario): example:

(Translation: "As a vivid symbol of the home, they were passed on by the dying mother to her daughter or to her son's wife.")

3. Nine syllable line (novenario): example:

(Translation: "Alas, for thee, O brother! Yonder, songless days await thee. Ah no, have no fear of the dead: they love thee! The living only shouldst thou fear!")

4. Hendecasyllable: example:

(Translation: "Through me ye enter the city of sorrow; through me ye enter the realm of eternal grief; through me ye enter the regions of the damned").

The typical ending of these various lines is the trochee (symbols long dash U, verso piano). The iambic (symbols U long dash, verso tronco) and the dactyllic (symbols long dash UU, verso sdrucciolo) endings (requiring respectively one syllable less and one syllable more than the verso piano) constitute occasional variations. We have found that these rarer lines are recognized rather as curiosities than as difficulties by the children who easily refer them to their respective normal types. They are accordingly presented in our material along with the common verses of trochaic endings. Our illustration of the five syllable line given above showed specimens of the dactyllic ending (sdrucciolo, symbols long dash UU). Here is another example of alternating trochaic (piano) and dactyllic endings:

(Translation: "There's a very strange little bird up in that tree! Why, it's a little child!")

In the following decasyllables, the trochaic ending alternates with the iambic (tronco):

(Translation: "I will take thee far, far away on the wings of my song: there, among the flowery fields of the sacred Ganges, I know of a beautiful spot").

Some difficulty arose, however, when we came to lines with alternations of parisyllables and imparisyllables; though this new movement aroused real enthusiasm among the children, who greeted it as a new and strange music. It often happened that after the pleasurable effort of analyzing a poem with lines alternating in this way, the pupils would choose as "recreation" the study of lines of even-numbered syllables. Here is an example of the new type:

(Translation: "There were three hundred, young and strong! And now they are dead! That morning I was gleaning in the fields; I saw a boat at sea,—a steamer flying the white, red and green. It stopped at Ponza, remained a while and then came back—came back and approached the shore. They came ashore in arms, but to us they did no harm").

While the rhythmic accents were being studied, we found that the discovery of the cÆsura (interior pause) formed an interesting recreative diversion. In fact this work aroused so much enthusiasm that the children went from exercise to exercise, continuing at study for extended periods, and far from showing signs of weariness, actually increased their joyous application. One little girl, in the first six minutes of her work, marked the cÆsura of seventy-six ten-syllable lines without making a mistake. An abundant material is necessary for this exercise. Example:

(Translation: "From the damp atria, from the ruined squares, from the forests, from the hissing forges, from the fields bathed with the sweat of slaves, a scattered horde of men suddenly is roused. They listen, lift their heads, startled at this strange increasing roar").

The step forward to the perception of the syllabic units of the line is a purely sensory phenomenon: it is analogous to marking the time of music without taking account of the measure divisions. Syllabiating according to rhythm and beating on the table with the fingers solve even the subtler difficulties such as dieresis and synalepha, in recognizing the rhythmic syllables. Examples:

We print this verse in the above form, because it was thus divided by a child in his very first spontaneous effort at syllabiation. As a matter of fact, we present the material normally according to graded difficulties, using over again for this purpose the materials used in the study of accents. At this point also the accents themselves suddenly acquire a new interest, for the child is able to observe on "what syllable they fall." Thus his metrical study approaches completion, for now he can readily acquire the nomenclature of metrics and versification: dodecasyllable, hendecasyllable, etc. Then, combining his knowledge of the numbers of syllables and the location of the rhythmic accents, the child is at the point of discovering the rhythmic laws of verse construction. We were expecting the children to begin producing definitions like the following: "The dodecasyllable line has twelve syllables and four accents which fall on the second, fifth, eighth and eleventh syllables," etc. The spontaneous impulse of the pupils led instead to the construction of "mirrors" or "checkerboards" like the following:

The additional step to using the symbols of metrics was an easy one, and a graphic diagram resulted much as follows:

The next development is a complete study of the stanza or strophe in the form of a summary; the number of lines, the rhymes, the accents, number and location of the syllables. To distinguish between the stanzas is also to classify them, which becomes a pleasing task for the children.

One little girl, who was making a summary study of four terzets of Dante, suddenly called the teacher to inform her with an expression of complete surprise: "See, the rhyme always begins at the last accent!" She had before her:

So in metrics also the children, following the natural inclinations of their growth, pass from sensory discipline, to intelligent cognition, and graphic representation. Then they become the "explorers of their environment," the "discoverers" of general laws.

Translator's Note: The basis of Italian verse is in the syllable count, and the rhythmic accent. In English verse, however, the question of the syllable count is dependent on a much more complex consideration: syllable length; and syllable length, in its turn, is conditioned not only by the phonetic situation in and around the syllable, but by rhetorical stress as well. It is clear that Signora Montessori's experiments on the simpler Italian line have little direct bearing, save as an illustration of method, on the pedagogy of English Metrics. For whereas, the principal classifications of Italian lines involve merely the problem of syllabiation (complicated by dieresis and synalepha), with a numerical terminology (quinario, ottonario, decasillabo, etc.), the study of English versification demands an analysis of measure (feet) and of number of feet, with a terminology relative to each: trochee, iambus, dactyl, spondee, anapest, etc., hexameter, pentameter, etc., to mention only the most obvious elements of a science which, applied even to simple English verse, soon becomes extremely complicated. How much, then, of the study of English metrics, beyond the elementary concepts of stanza and rhyme, should be included in the Montessori Advanced Method, and what order of presentation of facts should be followed, still remains to be experimentally determined.

However, the most illuminating fact, as regards method, which detaches from Signora Montessori's experiments with metrical forms, is that long parisyllables are more readily analyzed by children than imparisyllables; and secondly that short imparisyllables prove easier than long imparisyllables. We might wish more explicit evidence that the hardest parisyllable is easier, therefore more natural, than the easiest imparisyllable—implied in Signora Montessori's presentation of this subject. Even so, her conclusions are interesting, and from more than one point of view. It will be recalled that the most ancient and the most fortunate of the meters used in French, Spanish, and ProvenÇal poetry is precisely the decasyllable (Song of Roland, the ProvenÇal Boecis, etc.), whereas the favorite line of old Italian popular poetry was the octo-syllabic verse. These are both parisyllables, though the succession of theses, or rhythmic beats, is not quite analogous to that of the modern Italian verses used in this experiment. It would seem, in fact, as though the children initiated by Signora Montessori into metrical studies, were actually traversing the earlier experiences of their Latin race.

Doubtless the reason why the parisyllable submits more readily to rhythmic analysis than imparisyllables, is that when the syllables are in even numbers, the line tends to reduce to two simple rhythmic groups—the decasyllable to groups of 4 and 6, with two rhythmic beats in each group; the dodecasyllable to groups of 6 and 6 (therefore of 3 and 3 and 3 and 3); the octosyllables to groups of 4 and 4; the six syllable to groups of 3 and 3. The imparisyllables on the contrary are rarely capable of such division—of such monotony, if you wish. They lend themselves to more complex rhythm, especially to "paragraphic" treatment. They are distinctly the rhythms of erudite, "cultivated," "literary" poetry.

We should suspect, accordingly, that what appears in the above experiments as length is in reality reducibility to simpler forms; and that lines capable of such reduction should be given first in an adaptation of Signora Montessori's method. It is, however, highly improbable that in English, where the only constant element in rhythm is the stress and not the syllable count, the line compounded of two simpler rhythmic groups should prove easier for the child than either of those simpler groups themselves. We see no reason to assume, for instance, than an eight-stress line, reducible to two four-stress lines, should be more readily analyzed than a four-stress line; or that a seven-stress line, reducible to a four-stress and a three-stress line, should be easier than either one of these. In fact, the predominance of these simpler elements in the English feeling for these longer groups is indicated by the fact that such compound lines are commonly broken into their constituent parts when printed (cf. The Ancient Mariner), even in cases where the isolation of these parts is not emphasized and rendered natural by rhyme. It will be observed that in the Montessori experiment the order of presentation was first, three-stress (anapestic), then four-stress (iambic), then two-stress (iambic) lines. This situation happens to correspond to that found in the commonest popular English verse, which gives undoubted preference, as witness our nursery rimes, to three-stress and four-stress iambics. Two-stress lines constitute in reality four-stress lines divided by rhyme; just as, in poems of distinctly literary savor, the two-stress line is further reducible by interior rhyme to two one-stress lines.

Three-Stress Lines (Trimeter)

Four-Stress Lines (Tetrameter)

Examples: Byron, The Prisoner of Chillon; Scott, The Lady of the Lake; Milton, Il pensieroso.

Examples: Longfellow, Hiawatha; George Eliot, The Spanish Gipsy.

This line is much more common in its catalectic form:

Examples: Goldsmith, Retaliation; Byron, The Destruction of Sennacherib.

Examples: Byron, Song of Saul; Dryden, An Evening's Love.

Two-Stress Lines

Examples: Herrick, To the Lark; Shakespeare, Midsummernight's Dream (Bottom's Song).

Examples: George Eliot, The Spanish Gipsy; Campion, Art of Poesie.

Examples: Shelley, Arethusa; Scott, The Lady of the Lake (Coronach).

Examples: Tennyson, Charge of the Light Brigade; Longfellow, Saga of King Olaf.

One-Stress Line

Example:

Seven-Stress Lines (Heptameter)

Examples: Howe, Battle Hymn of the Republic; Byron, Stanzas for Music; Kipling, Wolcott Balestier; Coleridge, The Ancient Mariner.

Example: Swinburne, Clear the Way.

Example: Swinburne, The Birds.

Example: Anonymous.

Six-Stress Lines (Hexameter)

Example: Wordsworth, The Pet Lamb.

Example: Swinburne, The Last Oracle.

Examples: Tennyson, Maud; Swinburne, The Garden of Cymodoce.

Examples: Swinburne, Hesperia; Longfellow, Evangeline.

Eight-Stress Lines

Example: William Webbe, Discourse of English Poetrie.

Examples: Tennyson, Locksley Hall; Poe, The Raven.

Example: Swinburne, March.

Example: Longfellow, Golden Legend, 4.

Five-Stress Lines (Pentameter)

Examples: Milton, Paradise Lost; Bryant, Thanatopsis, etc., etc.

Examples: Browning, One word more; Tennyson, The Vision of Sin.

Examples: Browning, Saul; Tennyson, Maud.

Very rare in English.

While the remainder of the exercises in syllabication and graphic transcription, as described by Dr. Montessori, would seem to follow naturally on the above exercises in the analysis of line stress, it is clear that additional attention must be given to questions of terminology. For the metrical syntheses performed in the tables at the end of the preceding section will not be possible for English poetry unless the child is able to identify the kinds of feet and the kinds of lines. We suggest accordingly two supplementary drills with the card system familiar to the child from his exercises in grammar. The first consists of a list of words, each on a separate card, with the tonic accent marked. Each word with its accent represents a foot (iambus, trochee, anapest, dactyl), indicated on the card in graphic transcription beneath the word:

Corresponding to each word is another card bearing simply the graphic transcription and the name of the foot. The exercise, of the greatest simplicity, is to pair off the cards, arranging the words in a column on the table, putting after each the card that describes it. The cards, when properly arranged, read as follows:

A second stage of this exercise consists in offering a similar series of cards where, however, the word-cards are without the indication of the tonic accent and without the graphic transcription of the measure:

An identical exercise is possible for whole lines. The first stage consists of naming the lines accompanied by the metrical transcription with cards containing simply the transcription and the name of the meter; in the second stage, the same lines are given but on cards without the graphic transcription: for example:

1st stage

2d stage

When these fundamental notions have been acquired the child is ready for the more difficult problems of anacrusis, catalexis, irregular feet and irregular pauses, which he can recognize in almost any poem of considerable length by comparing the transcription of a given foot with specimen transcriptions of regular lines, which are always accessible to him.