-

'The wayfarer stopped by the well. He looked within its depths and
the water was far below. Idly he dropped a pebble between the
walls; and it seemed minutes while he waited until the water sped
its thanks.'

This is not metrical but rhythmic prose, and it would be wearisome if
the rhythm were not altered from paragraph to paragraph; short sentences
alternate with long at fixed intervals, or passive verbs are inset
between actives, while Gothic words, juxtaposed to Latin, or adjectival
combinations produce the same effect of rise and fall. The rhythm may be
regular as the movement of a woman's breast or spasmodic within the
regular as the flight of a gull.

Pictorially _rhythm_ is best gauged by certain tapestries based on the
flower backgrounds of Fergusson and Anne Estelle Rice. Assume a black
square of cloth; if the flowers are grouped thus from left to right:
dark red, pink, white, there is no rhythm, for the mental line is a mere
downgrade; if they are grouped: dark red, light blue, dark green, there
is no rhythm, for the mental line is a mere curve, a circular or perhaps
parabolic basin; but if the grouping amounts to: dark red, pink, light
blue, black, light green, cream, dark brown, there is a succession of
ebb and flow, rise and fall, _rhythm_. And this applies to drawing also,
if we accept that colour is indicated by line, that lines are colours
and that colours are tenses. That line can indicate colour is beyond
denial, for we accept that colour is not material while tone is
material. Colour being the _relation_ between an impression and the
impression of colourlessness, and tone being the resultant translation
of the intensity of the colour, then it is feasible to reproduce a red
and blue combination by a green and yellow combination of equal
contrast.[9] Therefore a combination of blacks may be made to balance a
combination of even seven colours, provided the relative intensity
(amount) of the blacks is in a true relation, in tone, with the relative
intensity of the colours. C. R. W. Nevinson achieves this with grays and
blacks, while Wyndham Lewis forgoes it.

[Footnote 9: Hence, _if the colour relations are maintained_, it is
correct to represent a blue-eyed rubicund man by red eyes and a violet
face.]

The quality of _rhythm_ being obvious in music needs no discussion; it
is the only form of rhythm the popular can recognise, but if we accept
the principles of grouping in phra