in French,
while quantity and stress are too uncertain to form the basis of a
metric system. Syllable-groups--so and so many syllables per rhythmic
unit--and rhyme are therefore two of the controlling factors in Chinese
prosody. The third factor, the alternation of syllables with level tone
and syllables with inflected (rising or falling) tone, is peculiar to
Chinese.

[Footnote 204: Poetry everywhere is inseparable in its origins from the
singing voice and the measure of the dance. Yet accentual and syllabic
types of verse, rather than quantitative verse, seem to be the
prevailing norms.]

[Footnote 205: Quantitative distinctions exist as an objective fact.
They have not the same inner, psychological value that they had in
Greek.]

[Footnote 206: Verhaeren was no slave to the Alexandrine, yet he
remarked to Symons, _a propos_ of the translation of _Les Aubes_, that
while he approved of the use of rhymeless verse in the English version,
he found it "meaningless" in French.]

To summarize, Latin and Greek verse depends on the principle of
contrasting weights; English verse, on the principle of contrasting
stresses; French verse, on the principles of number and echo; Chinese
verse, on the principles of number, echo, and contrasting pitches. Each
of these rhythmic systems proceeds from the unconscious dynamic habit of
the language, falling from the lips of the folk. Study carefully the
phonetic system of a language, above all its dynamic features, and you
can tell what kind of a verse it has developed--or, if history has
played pranks with its phychology, what kind of verse it should have
developed and some day will.

Whatever be the sounds, accents, and forms of a language, however these
lay hands on the shape of its literature, there is a subtle law of
compensations that gives the artist space. If he is squeezed a bit here,
he can swing a free arm there. And generally he has rope enough to hang
himself with, if he must. It is not strange that this should be so.
Language is itself the collective art of expression, a summary of
thousands upon thousands of individual intuitions. The individual goes
lost in the collective creation, but his personal expression has left
some trace in a certain give and flexibility that are inherent in all
collective works of the human spirit. The language is ready, or can be
quickly made ready, to define the artist's individuality. If no
literary artist appears, it is not essentially b