Colridge's views on Metre IN POETRY

 

Colridge's views on Metre and Sounds: 

Coleridge does not consider metre itself to be the cause or essence of poetry or that genuine poetry is to be ‘distinguished form prose by metre, though he does admit that ‘as a particular pleasure is found in anticipating the recurrence of sounds and quantities, all compositions that have this charm super added, whatever be their contents, may be entitled poems’ (Biographia Literaria Ch XIV). Tongue in check, he gives the example of such a poem which fails to be poetry, ‘Thirty days hath September, April, June and November’. Therefore he feels that although metre facilitates memorization, at least here, ‘superficial form’. Like Wordsworth who had harped upon metre as ‘superaddition’, Coleridge concludes that ‘the mere super addition of metre, with or without rhyme’ does not entitle these to the name of genuine poems. Indeed, he goes on the declare that the writings of Plato, Bishop Taylor and the “Theoria Sacra” of Burnet all furnish ‘undeniable proofs that poetry of the highest kind may exist without metre’.