When a word comes up fit to end a line with I can feel all the rhymes in
the language that are fit to go with it without naming them. I have
tried them all so many times, I know all the polygamous words and all the
monogamous ones, and all the unmarrying ones,--the whole lot that have no
mates,--as soon as I hear their names called. Sometimes I run over a
string of rhymes, but generally speaking it is strange what a short list
it is of those that are good for anything. That is the pitiful side of
all rhymed verse. Take two such words as home and world. What can you
do with chrome or loam or gnome or tome? You have dome, foam, and roam,
and not much more to use in your pome, as some of our fellow-countrymen
call it. As for world, you know that in all human probability somebody
or something will be hurled into it or out of it; its clouds may be
furled or its grass impearled; possibly something may be whirled, or
curled, or have swirled, one of Leigh Hunt's words, which with lush, one
of Keats's, is an important part of the stock in trade of some dealers in
rhyme.
--And how much do you versifiers know of all those arts and sciences you
refer to as if you were as familiar with them as a cobbler is with his
wax and lapstone?
--Enough not to make too many mistakes. The best way is to ask some
expert before one risks himself very far in illustrations from a branch
he does not know much about.
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