In this stanza an exquisitely modulated tune is played upon the syllables that make up the word “wandering,” even as, in the poem from which it is taken, there is every echo of the noise of waters laughing in sunny brooks, or moaning in dumb hidden caverns.  Yet even here it would be vain to seek for reason why each particular sound of every line should be itself and no other.  For melody holds no absolute dominion over either verse or prose; its laws, never to be disregarded, prohibit rather than prescribe.  Beyond the simple ordinances that determine the place of the rhyme in verse, and the average number of syllables, or rhythmical beats, that occur in the line, where shall laws be found to regulate the sequence of consonants and vowels from syllable to syllable?  Those few artificial restrictions, which verse invents for itself, once agreed on, a necessary and perilous license makes up the rest of the code.  Literature can never conform to the dictates of pure euphony, while grammar, which has been shaped not in the interests of prosody, but for the service of thought, bars the way with its clumsy inalterable polysyllables and the monotonous sing-song of its inflexions.  On the other hand, among a hundred ways of saying a thing, there are more than ninety that a care for euphony may reasonably forbid.  All who have consciously practised the art of writing know what endless and painful vigilance is needed for the avoidance of the unfit or untuneful phrase, how the meaning must be tossed from expression to expression, mutilated and deceived, ere it can find rest in words.  The stupid accidental recurrence of a single broad vowel; the cumbrous repetition of a particle; the emphatic phrase for which no emphatic place can be found without disorganising the structure of the period; the pert intrusion on a solemn thought of a flight of short syllables, twittering like a flock of sparrows; or that vicious trick of sentences whereby each, unmindful of its position and duties, tends to imitate the deformities of its predecessor;—­these are a select few of the difficulties that the nature of language and of man conspire to put upon the writer.  He is well served by his mind and ear if he can win past all such traps and ambuscades, robbed of only a little of his treasure, indemnified by the careless generosity of his spoilers, and still singing.

Besides their chime in the ear, and the images that they put before the mind’s eye, words have, for their last and greatest possession, a meaning.  They carry messages and suggestions that, in the effect wrought, elude all the senses equally.  For the sake of this, their prime office, the rest is many times forgotten or scorned, the tune is disordered and havoc played with the lineaments of the picture, because without these the word can still do its business.  The refutation of those critics who, in their analysis of the power of literature, make much of music and picture, is contained in the most moving passages that have found utterance from man.  Consider the intensity of a saying like that of St. Paul:- “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”