Listen to Sean Barret reading the sestet of Milton's "On his Blindness".

Milton's sequence of clauses "His state /Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed" is exceptionally difficult to perform rhythmically. The shorter a phrase, the more it resists being stretched over a prosodic boundary. The sentence "His state is kingly" contains only five syllables, but is stretched over a line boundary, assigning two very short syntactic fragments to either side. The sequence "thousands at his bidding speed" is stretched over a caesura, that intrudes upon it after the second syllable ("thousands"). In his reading of this hard-to-perform poem, Sean Barrett offers satisfactory solutions to most of the enjambments (as, for instance, in "Who best / Bear His mild yoke"). However, regarding the sequence "His state // Is kingly: thousands / at his bidding speed" his performance is quite disappointing. He isolates the sentence "His state is kingly" from both the preceding and the ensuing sentences by longish pauses. The word "state" is brief, and subordinated by a low intonation contour to the predicate "is kingly", suppressing any suggestion that "state" may end a versification unit. Likewise, the subsequent longish pause and the absence of any cue for discontinuity after "thousands" suppresses any suggestion that we may face here an iambic pentameter line articulated by a caesura. We simply perceive two unmetered prose utterances "His state is kingly", and "Thousands at his bidding speed". Listen to his reading of these lines.

Some other performers, on the contrary, observe a straightforward pause after "His state". Listen to Anonymus' and Leon Mire's readings of this sentence. Notice that though the two readings differ in nuances, they apply essentially the same intonation contours.

Can one imagine or secure a performance that would simultaneously preserve in perception both the versification and the syntactic units? In an attempt to secure such a performance, with the audio processor Praat I reduced the tempo (=lengthened the duration) of "state", to indicate discontinuation at the line boundary, and generated a rising-falling intonation contour on the vowel of "state", loosening the perceptual subordination of this word to the predicate. This yielded a fair indication of line boundary after "state", without having recourse to a straightforward pause. For good perceptual reasons, verse lines longer than seven syllables must be articulated into quasi-symmetrical hemistichs by a caesura. The brief sequence "is kingly" forces a 3+7 division on the verse line, upsetting its balance. The obtrusive break after the third position demands an obtrusive caesura after the fourth, fifth, or sixth position of the pentameter line (in this case, after "thousands"). So, I considerably shortened the ensuing pause, but still retained a part of it, so as to indicate discontinuity after "kingly" but allow, at the same time, to perceive the first five syllables of the line as one coherent hemistich. To achieve this, I also had to indicate discontinuity after "thousands", without having recourse to a straightforward pause. For this end, with the audio processor Audacity I reduced the tempo (=lengthened the duration) of "thousands", and lengthened, in addition, the duration of the /n/. This yielded a fair indication of an obtrusive caesura, without having recourse to a straightforward pause. Listen to the doctored version:

To foreground the change, listen to two tokens of "His state", excised from the genuine and the doctored readings, respectively.

Figure 8 Wave plot and F₀ contour of the genuine and doctored tokens of "his state".

Now listen to two tokens of "Thousands", excised from the genuine and the doctored readings, respectively.

Figure 9 Wave plot and F0 extract of "thousands" excised from the genuine and the doctored versions of "Thousands at his bidding speed".

Finally, listen again to a reading of the sestet, with the doctored section inserted in it.

Now listen to the word "Thousands", excised from Leon Mire's reading.

Figure 10 Wave plot and F0 extract of "thousands" excised from Leon Mire's reading of "Thousands at his bidding speed". Notice the rounded rising and falling intonation curve that "rounds out" the 718-msec word, and the 44-msec pause preceding the stop release.

Listen to the exerpt "thousands at His bidding speed / And post o'er land and ocean without rest", excised from Leon Mire's reading.

Listen to the exerpt "at His bidding speed / And post o'er land and ocean without rest", excised from Anonymus' reading.

Figure 11 Wave plot and F0 extract of Leon Mire's reading of "at his bidding speed and post".

Figure 12 Wave plot and F0 extract of Anonymus' reading of "Thousands at his bidding speed". This is one of the few places where the late peak as well as its forward drive can consciously be heard with the naked ear.

To foreground the difference between the two readings, listen to two tokens of the word "speed", excised from Anonymus' and Mire's reading.

Listen to two tokens of the transition from the line-final to the line-initial word "speed / And", excised from Anonymus' and Mire's readings.

Figure 13 Wave plot and F0 extract of the words in the line transition "speed / And", excised from Anonymus' and Mire's readings. Note in Anonymus' reading the exceptionally late, but very moderate, peak on speed, and the sudden jump down from the pitch of speed to that of And. In Mire's reading note the sustained high pitch on speed and the small downward step from speed to And.

The foregoing exercise does not presume to prescribe which one is the "correct" performance of Milton's hard-to-perform verse lines. Its purpose is to demonstrate that a performance can be imagined or secured in which the conflicting patterns of language and versification are simultaneously perceptible. The theory underlying the present work offers a psychological definition of "rhythmical performance", and predicts that certain performances are more rhythmical than others. To confirm or refute such predictions there are no other criteria than to submit the readings to the judgment of flesh-and-blood listeners. Pairs of imagined performances, however, cannot be submitted to panels of flesh-and-blood listeners. They can be tested (in principle, at least) only by comparing two actual performances, if available, in which rival conceptions are thought to be actualized; or by comparing a genuine recording with an electronically-manipulated version of it—manipulated in accordance with explicit theoretical considerations.

Recordings
On His Blindness by John Milton read by Sean Barrett
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0RrfIEmYj0

Milton, "On His Blindness" read by: Who I am is not important. The point is the poetry.
Classic Poetry Aloud
http://classicpoetryaloud.wordpress.com/2007/11/30/on-his-blindness-by-john-milton/

Milton, "On His Blindness" read by Leon Mire
Eighteenth-Century Audio
a collection of aural poetry
http://ecaudio.umwblogs.org/milton-on-his-blindness-read-by-leon-mire/


Audio processors
SoundScope 16/3.0 (ppd)
Praat 5.0.43
Audacity 1.3.7



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