8. CONSIDERATION QUALIFYING BREVITY.

Diffusion of Sentiment.—The due communication of an expansive emotion often demands words and repetition of words, not indeed necessary to the logical sense, but nevertheless essential to the effect. When, brooding over the immensity of the loss implied by blindness, Milton longingly regrets how “not to me returns days”, it is no use stopping him short there and telling him that says all. The passion of grief insists on measuring out its immeasurable sorrow. It will drink its cup of bitterness to the lees—“Not to me returns day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, or sight of vernal bloom”, etc. And when, on the death of his darling Absalom, the father’s heart breaks into lamentation, “O Absalom, my son, my son”, etc., etc., who would take David to task for unnecessary repetition?

There is not one single word in these quotations, whether first said or repeated, but is surcharged with emotion, and the expression in relation to the thing expressed is in the highest degree brief.

Nor is the expression of the infinite length of a day and a succession of days beaten out thin in the following two lines:—

“Slowly, slowly, slowly the days succeeded each other,
Days and weeks and months.”

Just as the expression of loneliness is intensified (not diluted) by repetition in—

“Alone, alone, all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea”.

Refrain.—Neither can refrain, or “burden”, of any song or emotional speech be censured for repetition. Emotion, if it leave an absorbing sentiment for a little, is bound to recur to it as short interval with intensified passion.