Speaking generally, poetic ideas can be conveyed word by word,
faster than musical feeling. The repetitions in the Poem Games
are to keep the singing, the dancing and the ideas at one pace.
The repetitions may be varied according to the necessities
of the individual dancer. Dancing is slower than poetry and faster than music
in developing the same thoughts. In folk dances and vaudeville,
the verse, music, and dancing are on so simple a basis the time elements
can be easily combined. Likewise the rhythms and the other elements.
Miss Dougherty is particularly illustrative in her pantomime,
but there were many verses she looked over and rejected
because they could not be rendered without blurring the original intent.
Possibly every poem in the world has its dancer somewhere waiting,
who can dance but that one poem. Certainly those poems would be
most successful in games, where the tone color is so close to the meaning
that any exaggeration of that color by dancing and chanting
only makes the story clearer. The writer would like to see some one try
Dryden's Alexander's Feast, or Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon.
Certainly in those poems the decorative rhythm and the meaning
are absolutely one.
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