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Hold your light, Brudder Robert,—

Hold your light,

Hold your light on Canaan’s shore....

For Robert, another name would be given,^[223] then another, and so on for half an hour. This seemed to Colonel Higginson “the simplest primitive type of ‘spiritual.’” Next in favour was:—

Jordan River, I’m bound to go,

Bound to go, bound to go,

Jordan River, I’m bound to go,

And bid ’em fare ye well,

then with Brudder Robert, Sister Lucy, and so on, the well-known cumulative refrain. Now if one had only the text of many of these songs, and knew nothing of the singing and dancing, one would call them rhythmical prose, recitative; for example, a part of The Coming Day. One is told, however, that this “was a boat-song and timed well with the tug of the oar.” The fact is that here, as in savage and presumably in primitive song, movement of body and rhythm of voice are the main consideration, while the words, on which civilized man imposes individual and syntactic correctness, are of very subordinate value. Syllables may be dropped or added at will, but the rhythm must be exact; and the simplest way to avoid verbal distress is the primitive device of repetition.^[224] When the words, and the thought in them, begin to be of overmastering importance in poetry, “scanning” acts as deputy of exact rhythm and song, until at last declamation pushes scanning aside, and rhythm is reduced to the same ancillary function once assigned to thought and words.