It is like wheels to a cart; not unsagaciously is
Pegasus figured with wings. He flies away with you, and you are lulled by
the regular flap, flap of his pinions, and his goal concerns you little.
The swing and the rush of the verse compensate for reason, and it is
wonderful how far a little sense will fly when tricked out with fine
feathers. Even in stately, rhymeless decasyllabics the march and music of
the verse help a limping thought along like a sore-footed soldier
striding to the band. But the prose-writer has none of these advantages.
He is like an actor without properties. His thoughts do not go along with
a flutter of flags and a blare of trombones. Nor do they glide upon
castors. They must needs lumber on after a fashion of their own, and if
there is a music to their ambulation it must be individual, neither in
common nor in three-eight time, but winding and quickening at will, with
no strait symmetry of antiphonal bars. There is nothing to tell you the
writer has made "prose"--as the spacing and the capital letters invite
you to look for poetry. He has to depend only upon himself. This is why
blank verse--which approaches prose most nearly--is so much more
difficult to write than rhymed verse, though it looks so much easier and
more tempting to the amateur.
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