It is well known that music expresses a range of feeling that lies
beyond the powers of words: who can explain, for example, the thrill
roused in him by a good brass band, or the indefinable melancholy and
gloom created by the minor harmonies of one of the great funeral
marches, or, in another direction, the impulse that sets him to
whistling or singing on a bright morning in summer? There are many such
kinds of feeling, real and potent parts of our consciousness; and if we
can bring them to expression at all, we must do so through the rhythm
and other sensuous qualities of the style which are pure sensation.
How is that to be done? The answer is difficult, and like that
concerning the use of figurative language: do not try for it too
deliberately. If without your thinking of it you find yourself becoming
more earnest in speech, and more impressed with the seriousness of the
issue you are arguing, your voice will show it naturally. So when you
are writing: your earnestness will show, if you have had the training
and have the natural gift for expression in words, in a lengthening and
more strongly marked rhythm, in an intangibly richer coloring of sound.
In speech the rhythm is apt to be shown in what is called parallel
structure, the repetition of the same form of sentence, and in
rhetorical questions.
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