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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: the beat, which in itself is decidedly less impressive than
the movement of the nobler prose; and it is just into this
weak side, and this alone, that our careless writer falls. A
peculiar density and mass, consequent on the nearness of the
pauses, is one of the chief good qualities of verse; but this
our accidental versifier, still following after the swift
gait and large gestures of prose, does not so much as aspire
to imitate. Lastly, since he remains unconscious that he is
making verse at all, it can never occur to him to extract
those effects of counterpoint and opposition which I have
referred to as the final grace and justification of verse,
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