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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: in rhymed stanzas. That is to say, it limits his fertility to an
occasional phrase, and three quarters of the time exercises only
his barren ingenuity in fitting rhymes and measures to it. In
literature the great masters of the art have long emancipated
themselves from metric patterns. Nobody claims that the hierarchy
of modern impassioned prose writers, from Bunyan to Ruskin,
should be placed below the writers of pretty lyrics, from Herrick
to Mr. Austin Dobson. Only in dramatic literature do we find the
devastating tradition of blank verse still lingering, giving
factitious prestige to the platitudes of dullards, and robbing
the dramatic style of the genuine poet of its full natural
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