I 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA! 
 Class 
 
 I 
 
A HANDBOOK 
 
 OF 
 
 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
EonDon: C J. CLAY AND SONS, 
 
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 AVE MARIA LANE. 
 
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 [All Rights reserved.} 
 
A HANDBOOK 
 
 OF 
 
 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 by 
 . JOSEPH B. MAYOR 
 
 Hon. Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge 
 Hon. Litt.D. of Dublin 
 
 or THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
 Cambridge 
 
 at the University Press 
 
 1903 
 
p*^l, 
 
 Camfmtige : 
 
 PRINTED BY J. AND C. F. CLAY, 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
9ok 
 
 M473 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 IN calling my book "A Handbook of Modern English 
 Metre," I wish to denote that it does not profess 
 to treat, otherwise than incidentally, of metre before the 
 time of Henry VIII. 
 
 My chief object in the first eight chapters is to 
 give a methodical and uncontroversial statement of 
 the principles, which are alike the foundation and 
 the outcome of my former work on English Metre, the 
 second edition of which was published in 190 1. In 
 the later chapters I have gone on to treat of metre from 
 the aesthetic side, and have ventured to put forward 
 some suggestions as to the connexion between sound 
 and sense in poetry. 
 
 The theory of metre here propounded, which assumes 
 the foot as the unit of verse, is, in its main features, no 
 new invention of my own : it has been held and acted 
 upon by the great majority of English metrists previous 
 to Dr Guest, whose learned but impracticable work 
 appeared in 1838. Since then there has been a kind 
 of epidemic of metrical theories, mostly ignoring or 
 contradicting one another. No doubt the elaboration 
 of these theories has been of value and interest to their 
 authors, and may have served in some cases to call 
 
 1.4I3-- 
 
VI PREFACE 
 
 attention to points which had been neglected by earlier 
 theorists ; but I think it cannot be denied that the 
 conflict of experts has a tendency to produce confusion 
 and uncertainty, or even entire scepticism, among the 
 reading public. It is for this public I desire to provide, 
 if possible, a clear and simple guide to metre, not 
 hampered by the rigid rules of Pope and Johnson, but 
 elastic enough to embrace the careless measures of the 
 old ballads or drama, as well as the latest experiments of 
 the twentieth century. Some may perhaps think that I 
 have allowed too much space to the examination of these 
 exceptional metres, which after all form a very small 
 fraction of the great body of English poetry ; but I was 
 desirous to prove to myself and others that the system 
 which I have followed was able to give a scientific 
 explanation of anything which deserved to be called 
 metrical, as well as to unmask at once any false pre- 
 tenders to that title. I venture to indulge the hope that 
 my book may be found convenient as a handbook for 
 those who have not had a training in metre through the 
 practice of Greek and Latin versification, and that it 
 may be a useful substitute for the latter in schools of 
 the more modern type. With this view I have added 
 Exercises at the end of the chapters, to show how the 
 study of metre may be made a means of training and 
 testing the mental powers. These exercises are of course 
 merely specimens, which may be multiplied to any 
 extent by the teacher. 
 
 One reason why I have thought it advisable to bring 
 out such a book at the present time is because I think 
 it must be felt by all educated men that the present is a 
 very critical time in the history of education. There 
 has been for many years a growing dissatisfaction with 
 
PREFACE VU 
 
 the results obtained in our old classical schools. Parents 
 justly demand a training which will fit their boys for the 
 work of life. " What," they ask, " is the good of giving 
 up ten years or so to the study of Greek and Latin, if in 
 the end the great majority of the scholars are incapable 
 of translating at sight even an easy passage from either 
 language? if their schooling does not train them in 
 habits of accurate thought, or foster intellectual and 
 literary curiosity, but rather tends to stunt originality, 
 and keep them schoolboys still, caring more for amuse- 
 ment than for the serious performance of the duties of 
 their business or profession ? " Unfortunately such 
 criticism often starts from a much lower level than this. 
 It is apt to forget that it is to our Public Schools that 
 some of the best qualities of Englishmen, such as public 
 spirit, power to get on with others, common sense, truth- 
 fulness, straightforwardness, unflinching determination, 
 patience, fairness, considerateness, a high sense of duty 
 and of honour, are in great measure due ; and it is based 
 upon the narrowest possible view of what man's work in 
 life is, and how he is to be prepared for it. Hence the 
 mass of our parents and parents' advisers are only too 
 ready to listen to the clap-trap of charlatans, ignoring 
 the fact that the only solid foundation for the science of 
 education is the knowledge of man's nature and of his 
 surroundings, supplemented by the record of his past 
 experience. Perhaps the most serious defect in modern 
 utilitarian schemes of education is the neglect of the 
 imagination, a faculty no less needed for the attainment 
 of truth and the advancement of science, for the 
 acquirement of a wide outlook and an intelligent 
 forecasting of the future in practical matters, than it is 
 for the true enjoyment of all higher forms of beauty. A 
 
vin PREFACE 
 
 materialistic utilitarianism may help to earn a living : it 
 is of little avail for the cultivation of feeling or intellect 
 or character, for the right employment of leisure, and the 
 moral and social elevation of humanity. 
 
 It is as a help to the training of the imagination that 
 the study of poetry, even from the earliest years, is of 
 such transcendent importance : and it is as a step to this 
 that I venture to urge the claims of prosody in our 
 secondary schools. I remember well the delight with 
 which I listened to my father's reading of Paradise Lost 
 to us children, long before I was able to understand the 
 argument of the poem. It was enough that the sound 
 sank into my ears : from that time to this, Milton has 
 never ceased to be to me the type of all that is noblest 
 in poetry and metre. 
 
 Perhaps it may be well to give here a caution against 
 a possible misunderstanding of the classical terminology 
 (applicable, strictly and originally, only to quantitative 
 verse) which has been for many centuries applied by 
 analogy to modern accentual verse by the metrists of 
 all nations. English accent has not the same fixity as 
 Latin quantity. In the latter the difference, as a rule, 
 • is absolute ; a syllable is either short or long : in the 
 former the difference is relative ; the stress may be 
 almost indefinitely varied. Hence modern stress is 
 more subjective, more under the control of the poet 
 or the reader, than ancient quantity. Especially is this 
 the case in trisyllabic verse, where the strong rhythm 
 at times overrides the syllabic accent, as in Browning's 
 
 Not a word | to each othjer; we kept | the great pace 
 Neck by neck, | stride by stride, | never changing our place. 
 
 For the same reason the same foot may be differently 
 interpreted by different readers, one making it a spondee, 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 another a trochee : and so, what one reads as an iamb, 
 another may read as a pyrrhic. The notation which I 
 have borrowed from Mr A. J. Ellis to distinguish degrees 
 of stress (o, i, 2, written under the syllable) makes it 
 possible to interpose an intermediate foot between a 
 trochee and spondee. Thus, in the following lines 
 
 Among I daughters | of men | the fair|est found 
 
 2 o 
 
 There are | more things | in heaven | and earth, | Horatio 
 2 1 
 
 'daughters' is an undoubted trochee, with strong stress on 
 the first syllable, no stress on the last; but 'more things' 
 has a stress on both syllables, though a greater stress on 
 the first, as I read it ; and it is a matter of indifference 
 whether we call it trochee or spondee. Even a complete 
 line, if considered by itself alone, may leave the reader in 
 doubt as to whether he should pronounce it iambic or 
 trochaic, anapaestic or dactylic : nay, at times it may be 
 necessary to examine carefully the rest of the poem, 
 before we can decide what is the predominant metre 
 which gives its character to the whole. 
 
 In conclusion I have to return my sincerest thanks 
 to the friends who have been kind enough to look 
 through my proofs, especially to Mr W. J. Courthope, 
 Mr J. R. Mozley, and Sir George Young, to whom I 
 am indebted for many useful criticisms and suggestions. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. 
 I. 
 
 II. 
 
 III. 
 
 IV. 
 V. 
 VI. 
 VII. 
 VIII. 
 IX. 
 
 X. 
 
 XI. 
 Index 
 
 Accent, Rhythm, Foot, Metre 
 
 Classification of recognized Metrical 
 Irregularities as shown in the Five- 
 foot Iambic Verse 
 
 The other Iambic Metres 
 
 Trochaic Metres . 
 
 Anapaestic Metres 
 
 Dactylic Metres . 
 
 Mixed and Doubtful Metres 
 
 English Adaptations of Classical Metres 
 
 What determines the poet's choice of 
 Metre ? Characteristics of trisyllabic 
 Metre 
 
 Aesthetic use of Metrical Variation, 
 arising from Feminine Rhythm, En- 
 jambement, Position of Pauses, Inter- 
 change of Feet, Special Quality of 
 Vowels and Consonants, Alliteration 
 and Onomatopoeia .... 
 
 Rhyme, Stanza, Refrain, Sonnet, Ode 
 
 PAGES 
 
 1—6 
 
 7—25 
 26—35 
 36—43 
 44—57 
 58-64 
 65-78 
 79—84 
 
 85-93 
 
 94—123 
 124 — 156 
 157—160 
 
ENGLISH METRE. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ACCENT, RHYTHM, FOOT, METRE. 
 
 English verse is distinguished from English prose by 
 the regular recurrence of the stress or accent 1 . Every 
 word of two syllables has a stress, either on the first 
 syllable as ' pity,' ' rtflling,' ' rebel ' (the noun), or on the 
 second as 'resoilnd,' ' foretell,' 'rebel' (the verb). In a 
 
 1 I use these words as synonyms, preferring the first, because 
 it is free from any confusion with the French or Greek accent. It is 
 however convenient to employ such terms as ' accented,' ' unac- 
 cented,' 'accentuation.' I mark the stress either by the accent 
 above the syllable, acute for stronger, grave for weaker stress, or by 
 the use of the symbols o, i , 2 written under the syllable, o denoting 
 the absence of stress, 1 denoting a weaker and 2 a stronger stress. 
 It is not, of course, meant by this that there are just three distinctly 
 marked degrees of stress, and no more. In the mouth of a good 
 reader stress varies indefinitely. But even such a rough classification 
 as 'no stress, weak stress, strong stress' is of great value in describing 
 the rhythmical effect of a line. The symbols - and **, which are 
 properly used to denote long and short syllables, are also not un- 
 frequently used to denote accented and unaccented syllables, irre- 
 spective of the length of the syllable, as ' midnight' ; though in it the 
 accented syllable has a short vowel and the unaccented a long vowel. 
 
2 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 half-formed compound, usually marked by a hyphen, 
 where the component parts are not yet fully blended 
 into one, it is possible for a disyllable to have two 
 accents, as arch-fiend^ outspread. A word of three 
 syllables may have the stress on the middle syllable, as 
 'en6rmous,' 'approaching,' or on the first, as 'terrible,' 
 'misery,' or (rarely) on the last, as 'colonnade,' 'maca- 
 ro6n ' ; or it may have two stresses, on the first and last 
 syllable of equal or nearly equal force, as 'indistinct,' 
 ' recollect ' ; or the stronger stress may be on the first, 
 the weaker on the last, as 'c6ncentrate,' 'duelling.' A 
 word of four syllables has two stresses, either on the 
 first and third as 'demonstration,' ' undermining,' or 
 on the second and fourth as 'auth6rity,' 'resp6nsible,' 
 where the latter stress is weaker than the former, or 
 even on the first and fourth, as ' ciimulative,' or such 
 foreign names as 'Trincomalee,' 'Allahabad.' A word 
 of five syllables may have a strong stress on the second 
 and a weaker on the fourth, as 'inexorable'; or it may 
 have a weak stress on the first, strong on the third, and 
 weak on the fifth, as 'indeterminate'; or strong on the 
 first and fourth, as ' authorization.' And so for longer 
 words : we may have a word of six syllables with strong 
 stress on the fourth, weaker on the first and sixth, as 
 'irreconcilable,' and a word of seven syllables, such as 
 'impenetrability,' with two strong stresses, on the second 
 and fifth, and a weak stress, on the first and last \ 
 
 1 The English tendency is to throw back the stress as far as 
 possible, as we may often hear in the word 'laboratory' a stress 
 on the first syllable, while the other syllables are huddled together 
 as though the word were spelt 'labratry.' For this reason, and also 
 to distinguish the pronunciation from that of the word 'lavatory,' 
 it seems better to lay the principal stress on the second syllable, 
 
 
ACCENT, RHYTHM, FOOT, METRE 3 
 
 It will be seen that where a single word has more 
 than one stress, this usually falls on alternate syllables; 
 but sometimes the stresses are separated by two syllables, 
 as the first and the second stress in 'irreconcilable.' 
 There is much more room for variety when we take 
 into account combinations of words, especially of mono- 
 syllables; some of which, such as the articles, personal 
 pronouns and prepositions, are often merely appendages 
 of verbs or nouns, and in inflected languages, such as 
 Latin, may frequently be expressed merely by a change in 
 the inflexion, e.g. dotni 'at home,' rex 'the king,' regis 
 'of the king,' dormit 'he sleeps.' Such words only re- 
 ceive the stress when they become emphatic from the 
 context; and as they are extremely common, they often 
 give rise to a sequence of three or more unstressed 
 syllables, as in Bacon's sentence : ' It is worthy the ob- 
 serving, that there is no passion in the mind of man s6 
 weak, but it mates and masters the fear of death.' The 
 most frequent cause of the accentuation of such naturally 
 unaccented syllables is the desire to emphasize a dis- 
 tinction or antithesis, as 'That which hath made them 
 drunk hath made me bold.' Emphasis may even change 
 the stress in a polysyllable : thus ' unkind,' usually ac- 
 cented on the last syllable, changes the accent to the 
 first in such a context as 'Good and bad, kind and 
 unkind.' 
 
 The above quotations afford examples of two stresses 
 in succession, 'no passion,' 'th£m drunk,' 'me b61d.' 
 Bacon's sentence also exemplifies the irregular accentu- 
 
 4 laboratory.' A similar change of accentuation has taken place in 
 the word 'capitalist,' which used to be pronounced with a stress on 
 the first syllable, but is now, I think, more commonly accented on 
 the second. 
 
4 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 ation of prose in contrast with the regular accentuation 
 
 of verse, seen in such lines as 
 
 The stag | at eve | had drunk | his fill, 
 Where danced | the moon | on M6|nan's rill, 
 
 which naturally divide into four couplets, or pairs of 
 syllables, each having the stress on the last syllable, 
 and being usually followed by a slight pause. These 
 couplets are the basis of the verse, and were called 
 'feet 1 by the ancients because they support the verse, 
 which seems to move upon them, as an animal on its feet. 
 
 Regular movement of this kind is called rhythm, 
 which may either ascend from an unaccented to an 
 accented syllable (rising rhythm), or descend from an 
 accented to an unaccented syllable (falling rhythm). A 
 disyllabic foot, where the rhythm ascends, is called an 
 iamb 1 , as in the example just given. Where the rhythm 
 descends, it is called a trochee, as in 
 
 Art thou | weary, | art thou | languid. 
 
 Verses differ, not only in rhythm, but in the number 
 of feet. The combination of these two factors constitutes 
 the metre of the line. Thus ' The stag at eve had drunk 
 his fill' contains four iambs,. and the metre is described 
 as four-foot iambic. ' Art thou weary, art thou languid ' 
 contains four trochees, and the metre is described as four- 
 foot trochaic. 
 
 Where the accents are separated from one another by 
 two syllables, we have trisyllabic rhythm, which may be 
 either ascending, as in 
 
 'Tis the voice | of the slug|gard, I heard | him complain, 
 
 1 The technical names of metres and feet were originally em- 
 ployed by the ancient Greeks to denote their quantitative verse, but 
 are now ordinarily applied by analogy to our English accentual 
 ^erse. 
 
ACCENT, RHYTHM, FOOT, METRE 5 
 
 or descending, as in 
 
 Take her up | tenderly. 
 
 The former is composed of four anapaests, and the 
 metre is described as four-foot anapaestic, the latter con- 
 tains two dactyls, and the metre is described as two-foot 
 dactylic. 
 
 By far the largest amount, if not the whole, of English 
 poetry falls into one or other of these four great classes, 
 iambic, trochaic, anapaestic, dactylic. 
 
 Exercises on Chapter I. 
 
 Divide the lines which follow, putting a bar at the 
 end of each foot ; and name the metre of each line. 
 
 If parts allure thee, think how Bacon shined, 
 The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind. Pope. 
 
 And the whispering sound of the cool colonnade. 
 
 Cowi'KR. 
 
 But yet, though thick the shafts as snow, 
 Though charging knights like whirlwinds go, 
 Though bill-men ply the deadly blow, 
 
 Unbroken was the ring. 
 The stubborn spear-men still made good 
 Their dark impenetrable wood. Scott. 
 
 / y v 4 
 
 Clear and bright it should be ever, 
 
 Flowing like a crystal river. Tennyson. 
 
 Oh, it was pitiful ! 
 ' Near a whole city full. Hood. 
 
 Cannon to right of them, 
 
 Cannon to left of them. Tennyson./ / 
 
 / ' 
 
 In the touch of this bos^m there worketh a spell, 
 Which is lord of thy utterance, Cnristabel. Coleridge. 
 
6 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 Arrange the following in metrical lines and name the 
 metre. 
 
 1 But,' sayest thou — and I marvel, I repeat, to find thee tripping 
 on a mere word — 'what thou writest, paintest, stays: that does not 
 die : Sappho survives, because we sing her songs, and Aeschylus, 
 because we read his plays. ' Say rather that my fate is deadlier still, 
 in this, that every day my sense of joy grows more acute, my soul 
 (intensified by power and insight) more enlarged, more keen ; while 
 every day my hairs fall more and more, the horror quickening still 
 from year to year, the consummation coming past escape, when, all 
 my works, wherein I prove my worth, being present still to mock 
 me in men's mouths, I, I, the feeling, thinking, acting man, shall 
 sleep in my urn. It is so horrible, I dare at times imagine to my 
 need some future state revealed to us by Zeus, unlimited in capability 
 for joy, as this is in desire for joy, to seek which the joy-hunger 
 forces us : that stung by straitness of our life — made strait on purpose 
 to make sweet the life at large — freed by the throbbing impulse we 
 call death, we burst there as the worm into the fly, who, while 
 a worm still, wants his wings. But, no ! Zeus has not yet revealed 
 it ; and, alas, he must have done so, were it possible. 
 
 Browning. 
 
 It is not growing like a tree in bulk, doth make man better be ; 
 or standing long an oak three hundred year, to fall a log at last, dry 
 bald and sere. A lily of a day is fairer far in May; although it fall 
 and die that night, it was the plant and flower of light. In small 
 proportions we just beauties see: and in short measures life may 
 perfect be. B. Jonson. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 CLASSIFICATION OF RECOGNIZED METRICAL 
 IRREGULARITIES, AS SHOWN IN THE 
 FIVE-FOOT IAMBIC VERSE. 
 
 In the last chapter we dealt with the classification of 
 English metres, of which we found that there were four 
 principal types : in this chapter I propose to consider 
 variations of type, i.e. the various ways in which the strict 
 law of metre admits of relaxation ; and I shall do this 
 with special reference to that which is by far the most 
 important of all English metres, the five-foot iambic, or 
 heroic metre. 
 
 The strict law of the metre is seen most clearly in 
 such a line as Milton's 
 
 And swims | or sinks j or wades | or creeps | or flies 
 
 {Paradise Lost, II. 950) 
 
 where the feet are all regular iambs, where the close of 
 the foot coincides with the close of a word, and where 
 the flow of the rhythm is not obscured or interrupted by 
 a stop. It is this law or type, which is felt by the poet to 
 be the permanent factor in all the varying developments 
 of which the line is capable ; law and impulse thus 
 
8 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 combining to produce in the reader the pleasurable sense 
 of an ordered freedom in the rhythmical movement. As 
 Dr Johnson says in his life of Dryden, 'the essence of 
 verse is regularity, and its ornament is variety.' Contrast 
 with Milton's line this from Tennyson 
 
 With ro|sy slen|der fin|g£fs back|ward drew 
 
 where the only place in which the close of the foot coin- 
 cides with the end of the word is the last foot, the line 
 being, as it might seem, made up of four trochees inter- 
 posed between two monosyllables; yet the feet are 
 perfectly regular, except that they are obscured by the 
 natural pauses in reading. A still more marked effect is 
 produced when the pause is long enough to be denoted 
 by a stop, other than that at the end of the line. The 
 commonest of these internal stops is that which divides 
 the line into two, more or less equal, parts, coming after 
 the 4th, 5th, or 6th syllable, i.e. at the end of the 2nd 
 or 3rd or in the middle of the 3rd foot. A stop at the 
 end of the foot interrupts the flow of the rhythm, but 
 does not clash with it. Take the following as examples : 
 
 Just hint [ a fault, | and hes|itate | dislike. 
 
 Thy trag|ic muse | gives smiles, | thy com|ic, sleep. 
 
 No wit I to flat|ter, left j of all I his store; 
 
 No fool I to laugh | at, which j he val|ued more. Pope. 
 
 Less frequent in Pope, but not much less so in 
 Tennyson, are the stops in the middle of the 2nd or the 
 4th foot. The last line of the latter's Lucretius gives an 
 example of both : 
 
 Thy du|ty? What | is du|ty? Fare | thee well. 
 
 So Milton : 
 
 What in me is dark 
 Illu|mine, what | is low | raise and | support. 
 
METRICAL IRREGULARITIES 9 
 
 We come then to the stops after the ist and 4th foot, 
 
 and those in the middle of the ist and 5th. Examples 
 
 of these are^ 
 
 Say first, | of God | above | or man | below, 
 
 What can | we rea|son, but | from what | we know? Pope. 
 
 In Si Ion al!so not | unsung, | where stood 
 
 Her tem|ple on | th' offensive mount|ain, built 
 
 By that | uxorjious king, | whose heart, | though large, 
 
 Beguiled | by fair | idol{atress|es fell. Milton. 
 
 Loud, as I from numjbers with|out num|ber, sweet, 
 As from | blest voi|ces ut|tering joy. Milton. 
 
 The most essential pause in the line is that at the 
 end, which prevents one verse from running over into 
 another, and so keeps the metre intact ; but this is often 
 omitted for the sake of variety, or to give the impression 
 of ease and negligence, as in dramatic poetry, or for other 
 reasons which will appear later on. Examples will be 
 found in Paradise Lost 11. 347 foil. : 
 
 The happy seat 
 Of some new race, called Man, about this time 
 To be created like to us, though less 
 In power and excellence, but favoured more 
 Of Him who rules above. 
 
 This unstopped line is much more frequent in Shake- 
 speare's later plays than in the earlier ones. Compare 
 
 I know not: but I am sure 'tis safer to 1 
 
 -Avoid what's grown, than question how 'tis born. 
 
 * *   » • 
 
 Be pilot to me, and thy places shall 
 
 -Still neighbour mine: my ships are ready, and 
 
 -My people did expect my hence departure. 
 
 Winter's Tale. 
 
 1 This is an example of the 'weak ending,' which may be 
 conveniently marked by the sign - at the beginning of the follow- 
 ing line. 
 
10 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 Another important variation of the strict line is caused 
 by modification of the stress, either by means of inversion, 
 changing the iamb into a trochee ; or by loss of stress, 
 giving an unaccented foot, which may be conveniently 
 denoted by the classical term 'pyrrhic,' properly used 
 of a foot containing two short syllables ; or by addition 
 of stress, giving a doubly accented foot, for which we may 
 borrow the classical term ' spondee,' properly used of a 
 foot containing two long syllables. 
 
 Inversion of stress is found most frequently in the 
 
 first foot, as 
 
 Why did | I write? | What sin, | to me | unknown, 
 Dipped me | in ink ? | My parents' or | my own ? Pope. 
 
 But also in the 2nd foot, as in Hamlet 1 
 
 There are | more things | in heaven | and earth, j Horatio, 
 2 1 
 
 Than are | dreamt of | in your j philosophy. 
 
 2 o 
 
 Among I daughters | of men | the fair|est found. 
 
 Milton P. R. 11. 154. 
 
 This sequence (iamb followed by trochee in the 2nd 
 place) is not uncommon in Milton and some later 
 writers. Compare 
 
 Of man's | first dis|obe|dience and | the fruit. P. L. I. 1. 
 
 O 2 2 10 2 
 
 A mind | not to | be changed | by place | or time. P. L.i. 253. 
 
 01 20 
 
 The full I blaze of | thy beams, | and through | a cloud. 
 01 20 
 
 P. L. in. 378. 
 
 His own I works and | their works | at once | to view. 
 01 10 1 1 
 
 P. L. in. 59. 
 
 With fierce | gusts and | precip|ita|tive force. Shelley. 
 
 01 20 
 
 1 The figures below the line indicate the degree of stress which 
 I should myself give in reading the line. 
 
METRICAL IRREGULARITIES II 
 
 The trochee is also found in the other feet, as again in 
 Hamlet : 
 
 Nay, anlswer me: | stand and | unfold | yourself. 
 
 2 
 
 The ri|vals of | my watch: | bid them | make haste. 
 
 Such inversion is rarest in the last foot, as 
 
 Our fears | do make | us traijtors. You | know not. 
 
 X o 
 
 Macb. IV. 2. 4. 
 I break | upon | your rest, | I must | speak with 
 Count Cenci. x ° Shelley. 
 
 Down the | low tur'ret stairs | palpijtating. Tennyson. 
 
 X O 2 10 
 
 With whom | Alcmejna played, | but nought | witting. 
 
 I o 
 
 W. Morris. 
 
 See further examples from Surrey in my Chapters on 
 Metre \ p. 159. 
 
 Milton is perhaps at times too daring in his use of 
 trochaic inversion, as in the line 
 
 Burnt af]ter them | to the | bottomless pit. P. L. vi. 866. 
 
 210 000 20 
 
 He has also followed the Italian fashion 1 of the double 
 trochee with no great success, in such lines as 
 
 Shoots injvisijble vir|tue e'en | to the deep. P. Z. in. 587. 
 2 020 
 
 In the I visions j of God. | It was | a hill. P. L. XI. 377. 
 
 10 2 
 
 Universal 2 | reproach | far worse | to bear. P. L. vi. 34. 
 1020 
 
 On the other hand, Spenser has one magnificent 
 example in the Alexandrine : 
 
 As the I God of | my life. ] Why hath | he me | abhorred ? 
 
 10 2001 20 OXOI 
 
 1 See R. W. Evans, Versification, p. 84, quoted in my Chapters 
 on Metre, p. 76. 
 
 2 To read this line properly it is necessary to dwell on the 1st 
 syllable and to place a double stress on the 3rd. 
 
12 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 So Shelley : 
 
 Light it | into | the win|ter of | the tomb. Epipsychidion. 
 
 1 OIO 
 
 Harmojnizing | silence | without | a sound. lb. 
 
 2 10 10 
 
 And Tennyson : 
 
 Strove to | buffet \ to land | in vain. | A tree. 
 
 2 O 2 
 
 Palpijtated, ! her hand | shook, and | we heard. 
 
 2 10 2 O 
 
 In Enoch Arden there is a line consisting of five 
 trochees, as I read it : 
 
 Take your | own time, | Annie, | take your | own time. 
 
 IO 21 10 10 21 
 
 I go on now to the substitution of the stressless 
 and the two-stressed foot (pyrrhic and spondee) for the 
 iamb. These may be naturally taken together, as they 
 are often found together, the loss of stress in one foot 
 being compensated by added stress in the neighbouring 
 foot, as in Pope : 
 
 The treacherous col|ours the | fair art | betray. 
 
 II 
 
 In words | as fash|ions the | same rule | will hold. 
 
 O O II 
 
 Against j the po|ets their | own arms | they turned. 
 
 II 
 
 Is the | great chain | that draws | all to | agree. 
 
 2 2 2 
 
 And of course in the more adventurous poets, as 
 Marlowe : 
 
 See where | Christ's blood | streams in | the fir|mament. 
 
 2 2 2 O 
 
 And Shakespeare : 
 
 Together with | all forms, | moods, shapes, | of grief, 
 ii ii 
 
 Myself | could else | out-frown | false fortune's frown. 
 
METRICAL IRREGULARITIES 1 3 
 
 To stand | against | the deep | dread-bolt|ed thun(der 
 
 3 3 
 
 In the | most terr|ible | and nim|ble stroke 
 
 10 13 
 
 Of quick, | cross light|ning. 
 
 3 3 
 
 He hath, | my Lord, | wrung from | me my | slow leave. 
 
 3 I II 
 
 I do I not set | my life | at a | pin's fee. 
 
 1 X 
 
 Milton has three and even four spondees in one line : 
 Rocks, caves, | lakes, fens, | bogs, dens, | and shades | of death. 
 
 3 3 33 330103 
 
 P. L. II. 621. 
 Say, muse, | their names | then known, | who first j who last. 
 
 II II3I3I 
 
 P. L. 1. 376. 
 And so Shelley (Epipsychidion) : 
 Stains the | dead, blank, | cold air | with a | warm shade. 
 
 103 3 33001 I 
 
 The next mode of varying the line is found in the 
 number of syllables. In the normal heroic there are ten 
 syllables, two for each foot, but these may under certain 
 circumstances be either diminished or increased in 
 number. We will consider first the addition of syllables 
 by the substitution of a trisyllabic for a disyllabic foot. 
 We may observe h'ere three degrees of distinctness. The 
 extra syllable may be entirely elided, or it may be slurred, 
 or it may be distinctly pronounced. Where it is dis- 
 tinctly pronounced, the effect may be to expand the iamb 
 into an anapaest, as in the 1st foot of the following lines : 
 
 To inspect | a mite, | not comjprehend | the heaven. Pope. 
 001 11 
 
 No ingrate|ful food : | and food | alike | those pure. P. Z. v. 407. 
 001 11 
 
 Knowing who | I am, | as I | know who | thou art. P. R. I. 355. 
 
 O O I 3 I 3 
 
 To revenge | my town | unto | such ruin wrought. Surrey. 
 
 1 I O I I 
 
14 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 What a haste | looks through j his eyes ! | so should | he look. 
 
 OOII I 2011 
 
 Macbeth. 
 The observed | of all j observers, quite | quite down. Hamlet. 
 
 OOI II 
 
 Of a fall|en pal|ace. Moth|er, let | not aught. Shelley, Prom. 
 
 O I 
 
 To the em|peror | his cap|ital cit|y Prague. Coleridge. 
 
 OOIOO OOI 
 
 He is gone, | she thought, | he is hap|py, he | is sing(ing. 
 
 001 OOI. 
 
 Enoch Arden. 
 On a sud|den, in j the midst | of men | and day. Princess. 
 
 001 o o 
 
 Of the oldjer sort | and mur[mured that | their May. lb. 
 
 OOI 00 
 
 Do I speak | ambig|uously? | The glo|ry, I say, 
 
 OOI OOI OOI 
 
 And the beau|ty, I say, | and splen|dour, still | say I. 
 
 O O I O O I 
 
 Browning, R. and B. 
 
 It is equally common in the other feet, as in : 
 Her dedicate cheek. | It seemed | she was | a queen. King Lear. 
 
 OOI 10 
 
 Draw; seem | to defend | yourself; | now quit | you well. lb. 
 
 I I O O I II 
 
 Like to | a vagabond flag | upon | the stream. Ant. and Chop. 
 
 O O I 
 
 Given | to captiv|ity me | and my ut|most hopes. Othello IV. 2. 51. 
 
 10 001002 o 01 
 
 Needs must | the serpjent now | his capjital bruise 
 
 10 001 
 
 Expect. P. L. xii. 383. 
 
 Other faults 
 Heaped to | the pop|ular sum | will so \ incense 
 
 10 OOI 
 
 God, as I to leave | them. P. L. xn. 338. 
 
 2 o 
 
 Of worth, I of hon|our, glo|ry and pop|ular praise. P. R. II. 227. 
 00 100 1 
 
 Thy poljitic max|ims or | that cumbersome 
 
 OOIOO I I 
 
 Luggage j of war. P. R. ill. 400. 
 
METRICAL IRREGULARITIES 1*5 
 
 The freezjing Tan|ais through | a waste | of snows. Pope. 
 
 X 
 
 That beau|tiful shape. | Does the | dark gate | of death. 
 
 I I O O I 10 II 
 
 Shelley. 
 Is pen|etra|ted with | the in|solent light. lb. 
 
 02010 O 0200 I 
 
 The el|oquent blood | told an | ineff|able tale. lb. 
 
 0200 I I O O 2 O O I 
 
 The sound | of man|y a heavily galjloping hoof. Tennyson. 
 
 I O O I 00 
 
 Thou art old|er and cold|er of spir|it and blood | than I. 
 
 O 0100 XOOIOO I 01 
 
 Swinburne, Mar. Fal. in. i. 
 
 The substitution of an anapaest for an iamb is 
 occasionally found in Chaucer 1 and is common in the 
 German five-foot iambic 8 . 
 
 Anapaestic rhythm was familiar to the Elizabethan 
 poets, not merely from its use by older writers, such as 
 the author of Piers Ploughman, but from the later 
 1 tumbling verse ' as used by Skelton and Udall, compare 
 Roister Doister I. i. 59: 
 
 I can I when 1 will | make him mer|ry and glad, 
 
 001 o too I 
 
 I can I when me lust | make him sorjry and sad. 
 
 001 o o 100 X 
 
 And in Shakespeare's earliest play, Lovers Labour's 
 Lost, iv. 1 : 
 
 This let Jter's mistook: | it import|eth me here. 
 010 01 00x00 1 
 
 It is writ I to Jaquenet|ta. We'll read | it, I swear. 
 
 001 00 10 O I 00 I 
 
 Also 11. 1. 232 : 
 Why, all I his beha|viours did make | their retire 
 
 1 Compare Schipper, Eng. Metr. 1. p. 464 f. 
 
 2 See Zarncke quoted in my Chapters on Metre pp. ^99 and 301. 
 
\6 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 To the court | of his eye | peeping thorough desire; 
 
 OO I OOI 00 10 01 
 
 ***** 
 His tongue, | all impa|tient to speak j and not see, 
 
 OOI 00 I OOI 
 
 Did stumjble with haste | in his eye|sight to be. 
 
 OO I OOI OOI 
 
 Or the effect of the extra syllable may be to sub- 
 stitute a dactyl for an iamb, thus combining inversion 
 of stress with increase of syllables, as in 
 
 Shadowing | more beauity in | their airiy brows. Marlowe. 
 
 10 I I o o 
 
 Victory | and tri]umph to | the Son | of God. P. R. I. 173. 
 
 100 00 
 
 Ominous | conjecture on | the whole | success. P. L. 11. 123. 
 
 100 00 
 
 Melody | on branch | and mel|ody in | mid air. Tennyson. 
 
 100 OOIII 
 
 With im|petuous | recoil | and jar|ring sound l . P. L. 11. 880. 
 1 0200 
 
 Of wave I ruining | on wave | and blast | on blast. Shelley. 
 200 
 
 Of pearl | and thrones | radiant | with chrys|olite. lb. 
 
 200 
 
 Evil I from good, | misery | from hap|piness. lb. 
 
 100 
 
 There may also be a trisyllabic foot without any 
 stress, corresponding to the classical foot of three short 
 syllables, known as a tribrach, as in 
 
 Of man's | first dis!obe|dience and | the fruit. Milton. 
 
 00 o 
 
 Down the j long av|enues of | a bound|less wood. Tennyson ; 
 
 00 o 
 
 unless we prefer to join the extra syllable to the following 
 foot, so as to make it an anapaest. 
 
 Entire elision is found sometimes in a single word, as 
 'scape for 'escape,' sprite for 'spirit,' ne'er for 'never'; 
 
 1 It is of course possible to read this line as beginning with an 
 anapaest and pyrrhic, but the dactyl seems to me to give a more 
 expressive rhythm. 
 
METRICAL IRREGULARITIES 17 
 
 sometimes in the merging of two words into one, as 
 '/was, thoitrt^ Pre. The mark of elision is very care- 
 lessly used in the printed editions of Shakespeare and 
 Milton. Thus in the folio Shakespeare we read in 
 Macbeth 11. 3. 92 
 
 Th' expedition of my violent love 
 where the metre requires 'the expedition'; and in 
 Pickering's Milton (Comus 596) we read 
 
 Self-fed and self-consum'd : if this fail 
 
 where the metre requires ' consumed.' 
 
 Slurring or glide covers the whole scale between 
 entire elision and distinct pronunciation. Here too the 
 printed mark of elision is often very misleading. Thus 
 in Milton we read 
 
 T'adore | the conqueror | who now | beholds. P. L. 1. 323. 
 Yet to I their gen'|ral's voice | they soon | obeyed. /. 337. 
 Lie thus | aston ished on | th' obliv ious pool. /. 266. 
 
 Yet the actual omission of the vowel in all such 
 passages is not only unnecessary, but it is positively 
 hurtful to the metre. In the first line there is no reason 
 why we should not treat r to adore ' as an anapaest, and 
 so in the second and third lines. 
 
 The principle of slurring is, in some respects, carried 
 further by Milton than by any other of our poets : 
 compare 
 
 The~one windling, the~oth er straight | and left | between 1 . 
 
 P. R. in. 256. 
 
 Anguish | and doubt | and fear | and sor|row and pain. 
 
 P. L. 1. 558. 
 
 1 This may have been imitated from Shakespeare's 
 
 The~one sweet ly flat.ters, the~oth|er fear eth harm. 
 
 Rape of Lucr. 172. 
 
 M. 2 
 
1 8 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 Of rain {bows and | starry eyes. | The wafers thus. 
 
 P. L. vn. 446. 
 So he I with dif ficul;ty~and lajbour hard. P. L. If. 102 1. 
 
 Though all | our glojry extinct | and happy state 1 . P. L.\. 141. 
 He is far, however, from the license of the old 
 ballads and of some modern poets, of which we shall 
 see examples further on. 
 
 The additions we have been considering so far have 
 all been within the foot ; but addition may also be made 
 of a short unaccented syllable outside the foot at the 
 end of the line, giving what is called a feminine ending, 
 as in Pope's 
 
 What can | ennoble sots | or slaves | or cow(ards? 
 Alas, J not all | the blood | of all | the How(ards. 
 
 And he | who now | to sense | now nonjsense lean(ing 
 Means not, | but blunders round | about | a mean(ing. 
 
 The extra syllable is less often a monosyllable, as in 
 Angels j and min listers | of grace | defend (us. 
 
 Still more rarely an emphatic monosyllable, as in 
 Fletcher's lines quoted by Darley in his edition of that 
 poet (Introduction xli.) : 
 
 Looks not I Evadne | beaujteous with | these rites (now} 
 
 Maid's Trag. v. 2. 
 The seas | and un|frequent|ed desjerts where | the snow (divells. 
 A powjerful prince | should be conjstant to | his poxver (still. 
 
 This superfluous syllable is much more common in 
 blank than in rhyming verse. By Shakespeare it is used 
 
 1 This slurring of the final y before a following vowel is almost 
 confined to Milton, who in this, as in other points of metre, was 
 much influenced by the practice of the Italian poets. The effect 
 may be loosely described as a change of the vowel y into a 
 semi-vowel prefixed to the following word, as starryeyes, and so 
 w in sorr'tvand. 
 
METRICAL IRREGULARITIES 19 
 
 more frequently in his later than in his earlier dramas : 
 thus, while in Love's Labour's Lost it occurs only once in 
 64 lines, and in Romeo and Juliet only once in 18 lines, it 
 is found once in five lines in Hamlet, and once in 
 3 J lines in Cymbeline 1 . Nor is it only one syllable which 
 may be thus appended to the line. We find two light 
 unaccented syllables in Marlowe, as 
 
 Faustus, I these books, | thy wit | and our | expedience. 
 Yet not I your words | only | but mine | own fan(tasy; 
 
 in Shakespeare, as 
 
 My lord, | I came | to see | your fajther's fu(neral; 
 in Coleridge 
 
 Unless I he took | compas|sion on | this wretch(edness ; 
 in Shelley 
 
 But I I was bold|er, for | I chid | 01ym(pio; 
 in Tennyson 
 
 But love I and na|ture, these | are two | more ter(rible 2 . 
 
 The addition of the extra syllable at the end of the 
 iambic line may be brought under the following general 
 law : 
 
 An unaccented syllable, preceding the initial accent, or 
 following the final accent of the normal line, is treated by 
 
 1 It is still more common in Fletcher, as seen in parts of 
 Henry VIII. which are generally attributed to him. See also 
 the remarks in Darley's Introduction to Fletcher, p. xxxviii. 
 
 2 See Chapters pp. 199, 212. Fletcher goes beyond all other 
 poets in this license. Compare the lines quoted in Darley's 
 Introduction 
 
 Have ye | to swear | that ye | will see | it executed. 
 No sir, I I dare | not leave | her to | that solitariness. 
 
 Here, no doubt, the syllables are slurred, so that what is audible is 
 scarcely more than soffriness. 
 
20 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 the poets as non-essential to the rhythm, and may be added 
 or omitted zuithout necessarily changing the metre. 
 
 We shall see other examples of this in dealing with 
 anacrusis at the beginning of trochaic or dactylic lines, 
 with initial truncation of iambic and anapaestic lines, and 
 with final truncation of trochaic and dactylic lines. 
 
 Feminine rhythm is not confined to English poetry. 
 It is found in the old French and Italian metres from 
 which the English heroic was borrowed 1 : and in these 
 the superfluous syllable is allowed also in the middle of 
 the line. This is known as the feminine caesura. It is 
 a question among writers on prosody whether the same 
 liberty is allowed in English metre. There can be no 
 doubt that a superfluous syllable is frequently found before 
 the middle pause, as in Milton's 
 
 That cru|el serp(ent | . On me | exerjcise most. P. L. x. 927. 
 
 02 10 
 
 Tongue-dough|ty gi(ant, j how dost | thou prove | me these? 
 22 20 
 
 Samson, 1181. 
 
 The point at issue is, whether this syllable should be 
 reckoned in the foot, or outside of it; for it is quite 
 possible to scan as follows : 
 
 Tongue-dough I ty giant, how | dost thou prove | me these? 
 
 with an anapaest in the fourth place. Or some might 
 prefer to explain the metre by introducing a foot con- 
 taining three syllables with the stress on the central 
 syllable, as 'enormous.' The Greek term amphibrach, 
 properly denoting a long syllable preceded and followed 
 by a short syllable, has been used by some writers to 
 denote such a foot. The assumption of such a foot 
 
 1 See Zarncke's Essay on the Five-foot Iambic line quoted in my 
 Chapters on Metre, pp. 296 foil. ed. 2. 
 
METRICAL IRREGULARITIES 21 
 
 makes possible an alternative explanation of many of the 
 lines in which we have found an anapaest : thus we might 
 divide Tennyson's 
 
 The sound | of many | a heavi ly gallopjing foot, 
 
 o 10 100 10 
 
 so as to give three amphibrachs instead of three ana- 
 paests, and Shelley's 
 
 The elojquent blood | told an | ineffajble tale, 
 
 OIOO I 2 0100 I 
 
 making two amphibrachs instead of two anapaests ; but 
 the latter gives, I think, a far more energetic rhythm 1 . 
 And the supposition of the amphibrach fails in the case 
 of initial anapaest, such as 
 
 To betray | the head y hus bands, rob | the eas|y. B. Jonson. 
 
 O O I 
 
 We may bold|ly spend | upon | the hope | of what 
 
 oo i 
 
 Is to I come in. Henry IV. Part I. I v. i. 
 
 In election for | the Roman emlpery 2 . T. Andr. I. i. 20; 
 
 0010 o 
 
 and also where an initial trochee precedes an anapaest in 
 the 2nd foot, as 
 
 Tweaks me | by the nose, | gives me j the lie | i' the throat. 
 
 2 0001 t O 0200 I 
 
 Hamlet. 
 
 To return to the middle pause : one chief reason for 
 maintaining Shakespeare's use of the extra syllable before 
 a pause in the middle of the line, i.e. at the end of the 
 2nd or 3rd foot, is that he frequently employs broken lines 
 of this type, in which it is impossible to explain the 
 superfluous syllable by supposing it to form part of a 
 following anapaest. Thus in Lear 1. 4. 203, Goneril's 
 speech ends with the broken line 
 
 Will call I discreet | proceeding. 
 
 1 See below on pp. 51 foil. 2 See above, pp. 13 foil. 
 
22 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 and shortly afterwards we have the broken line 
 That do|tage gives (it. 
 
 without continuation in either case. It seems therefore 
 probable that we should give the same explanation, where 
 the line is continued by the next speaker, as in Lear 
 i. 4. 252: 
 
 Than the | sea-mons(ter. 
 
 Pray, Sir, | be pa|tient. 
 
 We proceed now to consider the diminution in the 
 normal number of syllables. This may take place by the 
 loss of the first unaccented syllable in the line, what is 
 called initial truncation, a license to be explained on 
 the same principle as the feminine ending spoken of 
 above. 
 
 Examples from Chaucer are given by Prof. Skeat and 
 T "" Morris : 
 
 Til I wel ny | the day | bigan | to spring(e. 
 Noxv I it schylneth now | it reynjeth fast. 
 
 It is not uncommon in Marlowe, as 
 
 ifarjbarous | and blood |y Tam|burlane. 
 
 There are a few, not unquestioned, examples in 
 Shakespeare, as 
 
 Stay, I the king | hath thrown | his ward|er down. Rich. II. 1.3. 
 Bootless home | and weath|er-beat|en back. Hen. IV: Part I. 
 
 But it is far more common in the shorter iambic and the 
 anapaestic metres to be examined hereafter. I shall 
 therefore postpone to a later chapter the treatment of 
 truncation, whether initial, final, or internal. 
 
 In some cases the apparent absence of a syllable is 
 due to a change in pronunciation, as we find the termina- 
 tion -ion made disyllabic in old writers ; compare the 
 
METRICAL IRREGULARITIES 23 
 
 line above quoted from Lear, where 'patient' is tri- 
 syllabic : 
 
 Than the | sea-mons(ter. Pray, sir, | be patient 
 and Spenser : 
 
 Whose yieldjed pride | and proud | submis|sion, 
 Still dread ling death | when she | had mark Jed long, 
 Her heart | gan melt | in great | compasjsion, 
 And driz /.ling tears | did shed | from pure | affecltion. 
 
 Or the rolling of an r may supply the place of a syllable, 
 as in Marlowe : 
 
 Because | I think | scorn | to be |. accused. 
 
 For similar instances compare my Chapters on Metre, 
 pp. 36, 44, 165, 172. 
 
 At other times a pause takes the place of a syllable 
 (internal truncation), as in Hamlet 
 
 Forward | not permanent. | Sweet | not last(ing 
 on which see Chapters on Metre, p. 204 f. and below, 
 pp. 2>2, 34. 
 
 Exercises on Chapter II. 1 
 
 Scan the following lines, i.e. divide the metrical feet, 
 and mark the stress ; add notes, pointing out any varia- 
 tion from the strict type, either in the accentuation or in 
 the number of syllables, and naming the irregular feet : 
 
 Dry DEN, Character of Shaftesbury. 
 
 A fiery soul, which, working out its way, 
 
 Fretted the pigmy body to decay, 
 
 And o'er-informed the tenement of clay. 
 
 Dryden, Character of Villiers. 
 
 A man so various that he seemed to be, 
 Not one, but all mankind's epitome: 
 
 1 The more difficult rhythms are postponed to a later chapter. 
 
24 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, 
 Was everything by turns and nothing long; 
 But, in the course of one revolving moon, 
 Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon; 
 Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking, 
 Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking. 
 
 Pope, Character of Addison. 
 
 Peace to all such ! but were there one whose fires 
 True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires; 
 Blest with each talent and each art to please, 
 And born to write, converse, and live with ease ; 
 Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, 
 Bear, like a Turk, no brother near the throne, 
 View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes, 
 And hate for arts that caused himself to rise; 
 Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, 
 And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; 
 Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, 
 Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike; 
 Alike reserved to blame, or to commend, 
 A timorous foe, and a suspicious friend ; 
 ******** 
 
 Who but must laugh, if such a man there be? 
 Who would not weep, if Atticus were he? 
 
 Cowper, The Palace of Ice. 
 
 In such a palace Poetry might place 
 The armoury of Winter, where his troops, 
 The gloomy clouds, find weapons, arrowy sleet, 
 Skin-piercing volley, blossom-bruising hail, 
 And snow that often blinds the traveller's course, 
 And wraps him in an unexpected tomb. 
 Silently as a dream the fabric rose. 
 
 The Christian 's Enjoyment of Nature. 
 
 His are the mountains, and the valleys his, 
 And all the resplendent rivers. His to enjoy 
 With a propriety which none can feel, 
 But who, with filial confidence inspired, 
 Can lift to heaven an unpresumptuous eye, 
 And smiling say — 'My Father made them all.' 
 
METRICAL IRREGULARITIES 2$ 
 
 Coleridge, Wallenstein. 
 
 The way of ancient ordinance, though it winds, 
 
 Is yet no devious way. Straightforward goes 
 
 The lightning's path, and straight the fearful path 
 
 Of the cannon-ball. Direct it flies and rapid, 
 
 Shattering that it may reach, and shattering what it reaches. 
 
 My son, the road the human being travels, 
 
 That on which blessing comes and goes, doth follow 
 
 The river's course, the valley's playful windings, 
 
 Curves round the cornfield and the hills of vines, 
 
 Honouring the holy bounds of property. 
 
 Wordsworth, Lines on Tinterti Abbey. 
 
 I have learnt 
 To look on nature, not as in the hour 
 Of thoughtless youth ; but hearing oft en-times 
 The still, sad music of humanity, 
 Nor harsh, nor grating, though of ample power 
 To chasten and subdue. And I have felt 
 A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ; 
 A motion and a spirit that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
 And rolls through all things. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 ON THE OTHER IAMBIC METRES 1 . 
 
 Proceeding upwards from the five-foot iambic we 
 come to the six-foot iambic or Alexandrine, which is 
 a common French metre, but is rarely found in English, 
 
 1 The signs + and - may be conveniently used to denote the 
 addition or omission of unaccented syllables whether at the begin- 
 ning or end of the verse. Thus the feminine heroic 
 
 Cromwell, | I charge | thee fling | away | ambi(tion, 
 
 which shows an extra syllable after the last bar, would be classed as 
 iamb. 5 + . 
 
 The truncated trochaic 
 
 Come not | here A 
 may be marked with a caret after the last accent, and classed as 
 troch. 2 - . 
 
 A hypermetrical syllable at the beginning of the verse may be 
 marked with a curved line following, as in the line from Lilian 
 
 She), looking | through and | through me, 
 
 which would be classed as troch. + 3 ; while that from the Deserted 
 House would receive both marks, 
 
 So) frequent | on its | hinge bejfore A , 
 
 and be classed as troch. + 4 - . Conversely an iambic verse, which 
 suffers truncation at the beginning and has a feminine ending, would 
 be thus written 
 
 A Sub|tle-thought|ed, myr|iad mind(ed, 
 
 and described as iamb. - 4 + . 
 
 In the trisyllabic metres, where there is often a loss of two 
 
OTHER IAMBIC METRES 27 
 
 except interspersed in the heroic line, the only long poems 
 known to me in this metre being Drayton's Polyolbion 
 and Browning's Fifine at the Fair. It has usually a break 
 after the sixth syllable, as in Drayton's 
 
 J   \. 
 
 On which \ the mirth ful quire || , with their | clear o pen throats, 
 
 Unto I theijoyiful morn || so strain | their warbling notes 
 10 1^ 1 
 
 That hills | and val|leys ring || , and ejven the echioing air 
 
 O O IOO I 
 
 Seems all | composed | of sounds || about | them ev|ery where. 
 But this rule is frequently broken in Spenser, Milton, 
 and later poets, as 
 
 But pined j away | in an guish and | self-willed | annoy. 
 
 F. Q. 1.6. 17. 
 No strength | of man | or fiercest wild | beast could | destroy. 
 
 Samson, 127. 
 
 The Alexandrine occurs regularly as the ninth and 
 last line in the Spenserian stanza, of which the pre- 
 
 unaccented syllables, it might seem that we ought to double the 
 mark ; thus the verses 
 
 A A Few I and short | were the prayers | we said, 
 And we spoke | not a word | of sor(row 
 
 would be described as anap. — 4 and 3 + . 
 
 Dawn on our | darkness and | lend us thine | aid A A 
 
 would be described as dact. 4 = . But the substitution of iamb for 
 anapaest, and trochee for dactyl, is so constant, that it is unnecessary 
 to mark their occurrence. I shall therefore reserve these symbols, 
 in trisyllabic verse, for cases in which the foot is represented by 
 a monosyllable. 
 
 Verses with hypermetrical syllables may be conveniently divided 
 into prat- hypermetrical and post-hypermetrical, according as the 
 extra syllable comes at the beginning or end ; but as the latter are 
 generally known as feminine lines, I shall use hypermetrical in 
 a special sense, of a verse which has the extra syllable at the 
 beginning. 
 
28 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 ceding eight lines are five-foot iambic, as in the Faery 
 Queen : 
 
 The joy|ous birds | shrouded | in cheerful shade 
 
 I o 
 
 Their notes | unto | the voice | attempered sweet: 
 
 I o 
 
 The angel|ical | soft tremb[ling voijces made 
 
 1 II 
 
 To the instruments | divine | responjdence meet; 
 
 1 
 
 The sil|ver-sound|ing injstruments | did meet 
 With the | base murjmur of J the waiter's fall ; 
 
 O I I o o 
 
 The wa|ter's fall | with difference | discreet, 
 Now soft | now loud, | unto | the winds | did call, 
 
 II II I o 
 
 The gentle war|bling wind || low answereth | to all. 
 i i 
 
 It is also often used by Dryden and Pope to close 
 a paragraph, sometimes as a third rhyming line : compare 
 Pope, 
 
 A needjless Al|exan|drine ends j the song, 
 
 And like | a woundjed snake || drags its | slow length | along. 
 
 2 ' O I I 
 
 Not so, | when swift | Camiljla scours | the plain, 
 i i 
 
 Flies o'er | the unbendjing corn j| and skims | along | the main 
 
 1 I 1 
 
 and Dryden, 
 
 The day \ was named, | the next | that should j be fair ; 
 All to | the genjeral rendezvous | repair ; 
 
 10 O O I 
 
 They try | their fluttering wings, || and trust | themselves | in air. 
 
 I 
 
 The hounds | at nearjer distance hoarsejly bayed, 
 The huntier close | pursued | the vis|ionajry maid ; 
 She rent | the heaven | with loud | laments, | implo-ring aid. 
 
 The Alexandrine is seldom used by Shakespeare : 
 where it is used, it is sometimes meant to have a stilted 
 
OTHER IAMBIC METRES 29 
 
 and bombastic effect, and sometimes marks a maxim or 
 quotation : the latter in Merry Wives 1. 2 
 
 Love, like | a shad ow, flies, || when substance love | pursues 
 and in Merchant of Venice 
 
 Who choosjeth me | shall gain || what many men | desire 
 the former in Nathaniel's verses {Love's Labour's Lost) 
 
 If love j make me | forsworn !| how shall | I swear | to love ? 
 
 # * * * * 
 
 Thy eye | Jove's light ning bears, || thy voice j his dread ful 
 
 thun(der 
 Which, not | to an ger bent, || is mu|sic and | sweet fire 
 
 and Pistol in Henry LF., Part II., Act 11. 4 
 
 Untwine | the sisters three ! || come, Altropos, | I say. 
 
 The seven-foot iambic is the metre of Chapman's 
 Homer : 
 
 Achil les' baneful wrath | resound, | O god dess, that | imposed 
 
 o o 
 
 Infinite sorlrows on | the Greeks, | and man y brave | souls loosed 
 
 IOOO XI 
 
 From breasts | herojic, sent | them far | to that | invis ible cave 
 
 00 1 
 
 That no | light com forts, and | their limbs | to dogs | and vultures 
 
 I I o o 
 
 gave. 
 
 — » There is usually a pause after the end of the 4th 
 foot ; and if the line is there cut in two, it becomes the 
 1 common metre ' of the hymn-book, as 
 
 God moves | in a | myste rious way 
 His won'ders to | perform. 
 
 This seven-foot is sometimes alternated with the six- 
 foot, as in Surrey's Faithful Lwer : 
 
 For those | that care | do know, | and tastjed have | of troub(le, 
 W r hen pass ed is | their wo ful pain, j each joy | shall seem | them 
 doub(le. 
 
30 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 Iambic lines containing more than seven feet are 
 extremely rare. We will therefore return to the heroic 
 line from which we started, and proceed downwards to 
 the Four-foot Iambic, of which we may take Raleigh's 
 answer to Marlowe as an example, 
 
 If all | the world | and love | were young, 
 And truth { in evjery shep'herd's tongue, 
 These pretjty pleasures might j me move 
 To live | with thee | and be | thy love. 
 
 This metre is very common in Scott, Byron, Coleridge 
 and Shelley. The ordinary modes of varying the rhythm, 
 by change of pause and accentuation and by the use of 
 trisyllabic feet, are employed by Scott in such lines as 
 O Caljedojnia, stern | and wild, 
 
 00 I 
 
 Meet nurse j for a | poetjic child, 
 
 1 I o o 
 
 Land of | brown heath | and shagjgy wood, 
 
 2 1 I 
 
 Land of | the mountjain and | the flood. 
 
 2 I 
 
 The earl | was a wrath jful man | to see. 
 
 I 
 
 When shrivelling, like | a parchjed scroll, 
 
 I 
 
 The flajming heavens | togethjer roll, 
 And loudjer yet | and yet | more dread, 
 
 Swells the | high trump | that wakes | the dead. 
 
 2 1 I 
 
 Other writers make frequent use of initial truncation 1 , 
 giving the effect of trochaic metre, as Marlowe, in the 4th 
 of the following lines : 
 
 Come live | with me | and be | my love, 
 And we | will all j the pleasures prove 
 That valjleys, groves, | and hills | and fields 
 A Woods I or stee|py mountains yields. 
 
 1 See above, p. 22. 
 
OTHER IAMBIC METRES 31 
 
 And Shakespeare in 
 
 A From | the east | to west era In<l 
 No jew,el is | like Rosalind. 
 
 I IOO 
 
 In Milton's U Allegro and Penseroso this variation is 
 
 so frequent that it is hardly possible to say whether the 
 
 predominant rhythm is trochaic or iambic, as in the 
 
 following lines : 
 
 Come, pen sive nun, | devout | and pure, 
 i * i 
 
 A So her, stead fast, and | demure, 
 
 o o 
 
 All in | a robe | of darkiest grain, 
 
 I o 
 
 A Flow ing with | majestic train, 
 
 o o 
 
 And sable stole | of Cyprus lawn, 
 Over | thy descent shoul ders drawn. 
 
 I o 
 
 So in Shelley's Ariel to Miranda the first eighteen 
 lines are almost all complete iambics, but the next twelve 
 suffer initial truncation, and might with equal justice be 
 described as trochaic with final truncation. See^telow 
 on four-foot trochaic. 
 
 The reason why initial truncation is more frequent in 
 the four-foot iambic than in the heroic line, is that the 
 former is capable of far more variation in other ways, 
 while the latter, which Touchstone describes as   the right 
 butter- woman's rank to market,' needs stronger measures 
 to prevent its becoming monotonous. We shall see that 
 the same is the case with the four-foot anapaestic. 
 
 Milton's Hymn on the Nativity is made up of iambic ' 
 lines of varying lengths, with occasional truncation, thus : 
 
 The or acles I are dumb, 
 
 o o 
 
 No voice | or hideous hum 
 
32 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 Runs through | the archjed roof | in words j deceiving; 
 
 i i 
 
 Apoljlo from | his shrine 
 
 o o 
 
 A Can | no more | divine, 
 
 With holjlow shriek | the steep | of Delphjos leav(ing. 
 No night|ly trance | or breathjed spell 
 Inspires | the pale-jeyed priest | from the | prophet'ic cell. 
 
 o 
 
 So in other lines the first syllable is omitted, as in 
 
 A That | the mighty Pan. 
 A When | such mujsic sweet. 
 A Now | was aljmost won. 
 A Must | redeem | our loss. 
 A Long|er dare | abide. 
 
 The feminine variety of the four-foot iambic is 
 common, as 
 
 A For | his servjice and | his sor(row, 
 
 o o 
 
 A smile | to-day, | a song | to-mor(row. 
 
 Nor is truncation confined to the first foot. It is 
 found, though very rarely, within the line (' internal 
 truncation') as in Burns 
 
 The sun | blinks blithe | on yon | A town 
 
 I I 2 
 
 And on | yon bon|nie braes | of Ayr, 
 But my | delight | in yon | A town, 
 
 C 2 
 
 And dear[est bliss | is Lu!cy fair 
 and in Shelley's 
 
 . - Thy broth |er Death | A came | and cried 
 
 which corresponds to 
 
 Thy sweet | child Sleep | the filmjy-eyed 
 
 and in 
 
 Wail, howl | aloud, | A Land | and Sea, 
 
 12 2 
 
 The Earth's | rent heart, | shall an'swer ye. 
 
OTHER IAMBIC METRES 33 
 
 It is found also in Tennyson's seven-foot iambic line 
 
 For I | would see | the sun | A rise | upon | the glad | new year. 
 To-night | I saw | the sun | A set ; | he set | and left | behind. 
 
 We do not often find poems composed entirely of 
 three-foot iambic, as the hymn 
 
 We love | the place, | O Lord, 
 In which | thine honjour dwells. 
 
 Usually it is combined with four-foot, as in the Common 
 
 Metre of the hymn-book 
 
 There is j a land | of pure | delight 
 Where saints | immor|tal reign 
 
 or with three-foot feminine, as 
 
 Where Clarjibei | low lijeth 
 The breezjes pause | and die. 
 
 Three-foot feminine is also combined with four-foot, as in 
 And out I again | I curve | and flow 
 To join | the brimjming riv(er. 
 
 The Two-foot Iambic is very rarely found alone, as in 
 Drayton's Amour et ; 
 
 The steel | we touch, 
 Forced ne'er | so much, 
 Yet still | removes 
 To that | it loves. 
 
 In the following examples it occurs in combination with 
 three-foot, four-foot, and five-foot : 
 
 The sun | is sinkjing fast, 
 The dayjlight dies. Baring-Gould. 
 
 Sceptre | and crown 
 
 I o 
 
 Must turn ble down 
 
 And in | the dust | be e'qual made 
 
 With the | poor crookjed scythe | and spade. Shirley. 
 t i 
 
 O Lord | my God | do thou | thy ho|ly will, 
 
 I will | lie still. Keble. 
 
 10 II 
 
 M. 3 
 
34 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 Moore admits internal truncation in some lines of 
 this metre : 
 
 I said | A while 
 The moon's | A smile 
 Played o'er | a stream | in dim|pling bliss, 
 The moon | A looks 
 On man|y brooks, 
 The brook | can see | no moon | but this. 
 
 Of the One-foot Iambic an example is supplied by 
 
 Herrick : 
 
 Fair daf |fodils, | we weep | to see 
 
 You haste | away | so soon. 
 
 As yet J the ear|ly-ri|sing sun 
 
 Has not | attained | his noon. 
 
 Stay, stay, 
 i i 
 
 Until | the has [ ting day 
 
 Has run 
 
 But to | the e|ven-song, 
 
 And hav|ing prayed | together we 
 
 Will go | with you | along. 
 
 Exercises on Chapter III. 
 
 Scan the following lines, adding notes on the metre : 
 
 I wish I were where Helen lies. 
 Night and day on me she cries. 
 O that I were where Helen lies 
 
 On fair Kirkconnel lea. Anon. 
 
 Never heavier man and horse 
 
 Stemmed a midnight torrent's force. 
 
 The warrior's very plume, I say, 
 
 Was daggled by the dashing spray. Scott. 
 
 Fair is her cottage in its place, 
 
 Where yon broad water sweetly, slowly glides, 
 
 It sees itself from thatch to base 
 
 Dream in the sliding tides. Tennyson. 
 
OTHER IAMBIC METRES 35 
 
 Of all the glad new-year, mother, the maddest, merriest day. 
 
 Tennyson. 
 Misery, Oh misery to me, 
 That Jove at length should vanquish thee. 
 Howl, spirits of the living and the dead, 
 Your refuge, your defence lies fallen and vanquished. 
 First Echo. Lies fallen and vanquished. 
 Second Echo. Fallen and vanquished. Shelley. 
 
 Music is in the sea and air, 
 Winged clouds soar here and there, 
 Dark with the rain new buds are dreaming of: 
 . 'Tis love, all love. Shelley. 
 
 I sped like some swift cloud that wings the wide air's 
 wildernesses. Shelley. 
 
 God of our fathers ! What is man, 
 
 That thou towards him with hand so various, 
 
 Or might I say contrarious, 
 
 Temper'st thy providence through his short course, 
 
 Not evenly, as thou rul'st 
 
 The angelic orders and inferior creatures mute, 
 
 Irrational and brute? 
 
 Nor do I name of men the common rout, 
 
 That wand 'ring loose about, 
 
 Grow up and perish as the summer fly, 
 
 Heads without name no more remembered ; 
 
 But such as thou hast solemnly elected 
 
 With gifts and graces eminently adorn'd 
 
 To some great work, thy glory, 
 
 And people's safety, which in part they effect. 
 
 Samson Agon* 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 TROCHAIC METRES. 
 
 In the trochaic line the principle of the unimportance 
 of an unaccented syllable at the beginning or end is 
 exemplified (i) in the prevalence of final truncation, as in 
 the second of the following lines 
 
 Now the | day is | over, 
 Night is | drawing | nigh A 
 
 which corresponds to initial truncation in the iambic line, 
 but is very much more frequent; and (2) in prefixing 
 a hypermetrical syllable at the beginning of the line 
 (anacrusis), as in the 2nd and 5th of the following trun- 
 cated lines : 
 
 Sometimes | with se|cure de|light A 
 
 o o 
 
 The) upland | hamlets ] will in|vite A , 
 
 o o 
 
 When the | merry | bells ring | round A 
 1 1 
 
 And the | jocund | rebecs | sound A 
 
 o o 
 
 To) many a | youth and | many a | maid A 
 100 100 
 
 Dancing | in the | chequered | shade A . 
 
 20 00 
 
 This initial hypermetric syllable corresponds to the 
 final hypermetric, or feminine ending, of the iambic line. 
 Another common variation is the substitution, as in the 
 
TROCHAIC METRES 37 
 
 preceding lines, of dactyl, pyrrhic, or spondee for trochee. 
 A rarer substitution, of which examples will be found be- 
 low, is that of iamb for trochee. 
 
 One-foot Trochaic occurs in connexion with feminine 
 five-foot iambic in Herbert's Echo \ 
 
 But are | there cares | and busjiness with | the pleasure? 
 
 Echo. Leisure. 
 Light, joy | and leisure ; but | shall they | persev'er ? 
 
 Echo. Ever. 
 
 Two-foot Trochaic occurs in connexion with four-foot 
 trochaic in Tennyson's Poet 
 
 In the | middle | leaps a | fountain 
 
 Like sheet | lightning, 
 i i 
 
 Ever | brightening 
 
 With a | low mel [odious | thunder 
 
 IOO 
 
 and the truncated form in the same : 
 
 Hollow | smile and | frozen | sneer A 
 Come not | here A • 
 
 One of Tennyson's poems, The Oak, is composed 
 
 in this metre : 
 
 Live thy | life A , 
 
 Young and | old A , 
 Like yon | oak A 
 Bright in | spring A , 
 
 Living | gold A . 
 
 Three-foot Trochaic is found both in the complete and 
 truncated forms in Shelley's Skylark : 
 Keen as | are the | arrows 
 
 o o 
 
 Of that | silver | sphere A 
 
 O I 
 
 Whose in 'tense lamp | narrows 
 i i 
 
 In the I white dawn I clear A 
 
38 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 Like a | high-born | maiden 
 
 In a | palace | tower, 
 Soothing | her love-|laden 
 
 O I 
 
 Soul in | secret | hour; 
 and in Baring-Gould's hymn : 
 
 Now the | day is I over, 
 
 Night is | drawing ( nigh A , 
 Shadows | of the | evening 
 
 o o 
 
 Steal ajcross the | sky A • 
 
 In Maud xvii. we find 28 consecutive lines in the 
 truncated metre beginning: 
 
 Go not, I happy | day A . 
 
 In Lilian we have examples of the initial hypermetric 
 syllable and the substitution of dactyl for trochee, as well 
 as of the complete and truncated forms, e.g. : 
 
 When my | passion | seeks A 
 Pleasance | in love | sighs A , 
 
 O I 
 
 She), looking | through and | through me 
 
 Thoroughly | to un|do me, 
 
 100 
 
 Smiling, | never | speaks A . 
 In the next line the metre changes to Four-foot Trochaic : 
 
 So) innocent | arch, so | cunning | simple, 
 
 100 
 
 From be|neath her | gathered | wimple 
 
 o o 
 
 Glancing | with black | beaded | eyes A . 
 
 O I 
 
 Another example is the hymn beginning : 
 
 Day of I wrath, O | day of | mourning, 
 See ful I filled the | prophets' | warning, 
 Heaven and | earth in | ashes | burning. 
 
TROCHAIC METRES 39 
 
 The truncated four-foot is a favourite metre with 
 Shelley, who uses it with great freedom, as in Euganean 
 Hills : 
 
 Many a | green isle | needs must | be A 
 
 I O O I X 
 
 In the) deep wide | sea of | miser|y A , 
 
 I X 
 
 Or the | mariner | worn and j wan A 
 
 Never I thus could | voyage | on A . 
 
 * * * * 
 
 On the | beach of a | northern | sea A , 
 
 I o o 
 
 Which) tempests | shake e|ternal|ly A , 
 
 As) once the | wretch there | lay to | sleep A , 
 i i 
 
 Lies a | solitjary | heap A , 
 
 One white | skull and | seven dry | bones A • 
 
 Aye), many | flowering | islands | lie A 
 
 I o o 
 
 In the) waters | of wide | agon|y A . 
 
 O I 
 
 To) such a | one this | morn was | led A . 
 
 My) bark by | soft winds | pilotjed A . 
 i i 
 
 Here we have examples of dactyl, spondee, and iamb 
 in the first and second feet ; and frequent anacrusis, 
 giving twice over two superfluous syllables at the be- 
 ginning of the line, just as we have seen in a former 
 chapter two superfluous syllables at the end of the iambic 
 line. Of course these irregularities might be explained 
 on the assumption of a mixture of iambic, trochaic, and 
 anapaestic metres, of which we shall speak farther on ; 
 but the poem is on the whole so decidedly trochaic, that 
 it seems more natural to treat lines where the rhythm is 
 exceptional as belonging to the same type. 
 
40 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 Swinburne has a very attractive metre, which might 
 be classed either as four-foot trochaic with dactylic and 
 spondaic substitution, as marked 
 
 Dawn is | dim on the | dark soft | water, 
 
 I O O I I 
 
 Soft and | passionate, | dark and | sweet A , 
 
 10 
 
 Love's own | self was the | deep sea's | daughter, 
 
 I I 10 II 
 
 Fair and | flawless from j head to | feet A 
 
 10 
 
 or it might be scanned as anapaestic, thus 
 
 A Dawn | is dim | on the dark | soft wat(er, 
 A Soft | and pass|ionate, dark | and sweet 
 
 but I much prefer the former. 
 
 Five-foot Irochaic is rare both in the complete and 
 truncated forms. Tennyson has examples of both in the 
 Vision of Sin and Wellington : 
 
 He shall | find the | stubborn | thistle | bursting 
 Into | glossy | purples j which out | redden 
 All voluptuous | garden | roses. 
 
 I o o 
 
 He that | ever | following | her com|mands A 
 
 10 
 
 On with | toil of. | heart and | knees and | hands A • 
 
 So Matthew Arnold in Tristram and Iseult : 
 
 I, a | faded | watcher j by thy | pillow, 
 I, a | statue | on thy | chapel- | floor A , 
 
 Poured in j prayer be | fore the | Virgin | Mother, 
 Rouse no | anger, | make no | rivals | more A . 
 
 Six-foot is also rare. Usually it has a pause in the 
 middle, as in the truncated form used in Tennyson's 
 Cauteretz : 
 
 All a|long the | valley, I! stream that | flashest | white A 
 
TROCHAIC METRES 41 
 
 The absence of the pause, especially where the feet 
 and the words coincide, has a dragging effect, as in the 
 complete form used in the Vision of Sin : 
 
 Purple I gauzes, | golden | hazes, | liquid | mazes. 
 
 Swinburne has both forms in Epicede, truncated in 
 Melicertes. 
 
 Seven-foot Trochaic occurs in the truncated form in 
 the Lotos-Eaters 
 
 We have | had ejnough of | action | and of | motion | we A 
 and 
 Like a j tale of | little | meaning | though the | words are | strong A . 
 
 Swinburne in Grace Darling has both the truncated 
 and complete forms : 
 
 Thunder | heaves and | howls ajbout them, | lightning | leaps and j 
 flashes 
 „ Hard at | hand, not | high in | heaven, but | close bejtween 
 the I walls A 
 Heaped and | hollowed | by the | storms of | old, whence | reels 
 and I crashes 
 All the I rage of | all the un|baffled | waves, that | breaks and | 
 falls A.   ° ° 
 
 Eight-foot Trochaic is found in both forms in Locksley 
 Halh. 
 ' Slowly I comes a i hungry | people, II as a, | lion | creeping | nigher. 
 
 The truncated form is far the commonest : 
 
 Smote the | chord of | self, that | trembling || passed in | music | 
 out of I sight A . 
 
 Both occur also in Akbar's Hymn and Faith. Take 
 from the latter : 
 
 Quail not | at the | fiery | mountain, || at the | shipwreck, | or the | 
 
 rolling * ° ° 
 
 Thunder, | or the | rending | earthquake, || or the | famine, | or the | 
 
 pest A . 
 
42 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 Rudyard Kipling uses trochaic metre varying from 
 four-foot to eight-foot, with occasional dactylic substitu- 
 tion, in the Last Chantey : 
 
 Loud sang the | souls of the | jolly | jolly | mariners : 
 
 Nay, but | we were | angry | and a | hasty | folk were | we A . 
 
 If we | worked the | ship to|gether 
 
 Till she | foundered | in foul | weather, 
 Are we | babes that j we should | clamour (for a | vengeance | 
 
 on the | sea? A 
 
 Beside the more common variations we occasionally 
 meet with internal truncation, as in Shelley's Dirge 
 
 Come and | sigh A , | come and | weep A 
 which corresponds to 
 
 For the | year is | but a | sleep A 
 and in Tennyson's Locksley Hall-. 
 
 As I have J seen the | rosy | red A | flushing | in the | northern | 
 night A . 
 
 Exercises on Chapter IV. 
 
 Scan the following lines, adding notes on the metre : 
 
 Fear no more the heat of the sun, 
 
 Nor the furious winter's rages ; 
 Thou thy worldly task hast done, 
 
 Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages: 
 Golden lads arid girls all must, 
 As chimney-sweepers, come to dust. Shakespeare. 
 
 Where the bee sucks, there suck I ; 
 
 In a cowslip's bell I lie : 
 
 There I couch, when owls do cry. 
 
 On the bat's back I do fly, 
 
 After summer merrily. Shakespeare. 
 
 Oft, on a plat of rising ground, 
 I hear the far-off curfeu sound, 
 Over some wide-watered shore, 
 Swinging slow with sullen roar. MiLTON. 
 
TROCHAIC METRES 43 
 
 Why so pale and wan fond lover? 
 
 Prythee, why so pale? 
 Will, if looking well can't move her, 
 
 Looking ill prevail? 
 
 Prythee, why so pale? Suckling. 
 
 The wanton smiled, father wept, 
 
 Mother cried, baby leapt ; 
 
 More he crowed, more we cried, 
 
 Nature could not sorrow hide : 
 
 He must go, he must kiss 
 
 Child and mother, baby bless, 
 
 For he left his pretty boy, 
 
 Father's sorrow, father's joy. Greene. 
 
 Wake again, Teutonic father-ages, 
 
 Speak again, beloved primaeval creeds; 
 Flash ancestral spirit from your pages, 
 
 Wake the greedy age to noble deeds. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Speak ! but ask us not to be as ye were ! 
 
 All but God is changing day by day. 
 He, who breathes on man the plastic spirit, 
 
 Bids us mould ourselves its robe of clay. Kingsley. 
 
 Lo, the leader in these glorious wars 
 Now to glorious burial slowly borne, 
 Followed by the brave of other lands. 
 
 Tennyson. 
 
 Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest, 
 Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the west. 
 
 Tennyson. 
 Keep ye the law, be swift in all obedience, 
 
 Clear the land of evil, drive the road and bridge the ford, 
 Make ye sure to each his own, 
 That he reap where he hath sown ; 
 By the peace among our peoples let men know we serve the 
 Lord. Rudyard Kipling. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 ANAPAESTIC METRES. 
 
 Trisyllabic rhythm is a marked feature of the Old 
 English alliterative verse and of the ' tumbling measure ' 
 which followed it, but was comparatively little used 
 during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the 
 nineteenth century it was again revived and greatly 
 developed by poets such as Coleridge, Shelley, Tennyson, 
 Matthew Arnold, and Swinburne. The commonest varia- 
 tions arise from the omission of one, or both, of the 
 unaccented syllables of the foot at the beginning and the 
 end of the line 1 , and the omission of one unaccented 
 syllable in the foot within the line. Thus we have the 
 four-foot anapaest 
 
 A A Few | and short | were the prayers | we said. 
 
 And we spoke | not a word | of sor(row ; 
 But we steadfastly gazed | on the face | of the dead 
 And we bitjterly thought j of the mor(row 
 
 where monosyllabic and disyllabic substitution are marked 
 by italics. And so the two-foot dactylic 
 
 Take her up | tenderly, 
 
 Lift her with | care A A , 
 Fashioned so | slenderly, 
 
 Young, and so \fairh A 
 
 1 See above, pp. 19, 23, 30, 36. 
 
ANAPAESTIC METRES 45 
 
 Pibroch of | Donuil Dhu, 
 
 Pibroch of | Donuil A , 
 Wake thy wild | voice anew, 
 
 Summon clan | Conuil A \ 
 
 Having said thus much by way of preface, I proceed 
 to give examples of the different anapaestic metres, and I 
 will begin with the older poets. In 1557, Tusser pub- 
 lished his Points of Husbandry in a very uncouth, four-foot 
 anapaestic, of which take the following as a specimen : 
 
 Whom fanjcy persuajdeth, amongst | other crops, 
 To have | for his spending suffijcient of hops, 
 Must willjingly foljlow, of choi|ces to choose, 
 Such les|sons approved as skiljful do use. 
 
 Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Desdemona an 
 
 adaptation of the old song of Willow which is printed in 
 
 Percy's Reliques as follows : 
 
 A poore soule | sat sighing unjder a sycamore tree, 
 O willjow, willjow, will(ow, 
 
 With his hand | on his bosjom, his head | on his knee. 
 
   # * * * 
 
 Sing O I the green willjow shall be | my garland. 
 
 Contrast with this Ben Jonson's use of the three- 
 foot anapaest in Her Triumph : 
 
 Have you seen | but a bright | lily grow 
 Before j rude hands | have touched (it ? 
 
 Have you marked | but the fall | of the snow 
 Before | the soil | hath smutched (it? 
 
 Have you felt \ the wool | of the bea(ver 
 
 Or swan's | down ev(er? 
 
 * * * * 
 
 A O I so white, | A O | so soft, | A O | so sweet | is she 2 . 
 
 1 In what follows I use the caret in trisyllabic metres only 
 where two syllables are omitted. 
 
 8 It might be possible to scan this line as made up of three 
 anapaests and an iamb, but the rhythm is far more expressive if we 
 suppose the exclamation ' O ' to be equivalent to a foot in each case. 
 
46 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 Cowper has three-foot and four-foot anapaestic : 
 No long|er I fol|low a sound, 
 
 No long|er a dream | I pursue, 
 O hap[piness not | to be found, 
 Unattainable treas|ure, adieu. 
 The black|bird has fled | to anothjer retreat, 
 Where the ha|zels afford | him a screen | from the heat. 
 
 Burns has four-foot : 
 
 My heart's | in the highlands, my heart | is not here. 
 
 We come now to the nineteenth century poets. 
 Christabel is an irregular poem in which anapaestic and 
 iambic are freely mixed, as 
 
 There is | not wind | enough | to twirl 
 
 The One | red leaf, | the last | of its clan, 
 i i 
 
 That dan|ces as oftjen as dance | it can, 
 
 A Hang|ing so light | and hang|ing so high 
 
 On the top|most twig | that looks up | at the sky 
 
 which was imitated by Scott in the Lay : 
 
 The feast | was o|ver in Brank|some Tower, 
 And the La|dy had gone | to her se|cret bower, 
 Her bower | that was guard|ed by word | and by spell, 
 A Dead]ly to hear | and dead|ly to tell. 
 
 Perhaps no poet has surpassed Shelley in his use of 
 anapaestic metre, as shown in the Sensitive Plant, The 
 Cloud, Arethusa, The Hymn of Pan, and others. I 
 quote one or two examples : 
 
 When the lamp | is shattered, 
 
 The light | in the dust | lies dead; 
 When the cloud | is scattered, 
 The rain|bow's glo|ry is shed. 
 A Lis|ten lis|ten, Ma|ry mine, 
 To the whis|per of | the Ap|ennine. 
 It bursts | on the roof | like the thun|der's roar 
 Or like | the sea | on a northjern shore 
 A Heard | in its ra|ging ebb | and flow 
 By the cap|tives pent | in the caves | below. 
 
ANAPAESTIC METRES 47 
 
 Tennyson has anapaestic lines of one foot and two 
 feet, mixed with four feet, in the song beginning 
 
 At his work | you may hear | him sob | and sigh 
 
 In the walks: 
 Earth|ward he bow|eth the heav|y stalks 
 Of the mould jering flowers. 
 
 The truncated two-foot is found in the Merman : 
 
 A Who | would be 
 A merlman bold, 
 A Sit|ting alone, 
 A Singling alone 
 A Un|der the sea, 
 With a crown | of gold, 
 A On | a throne ? 
 
 We find the three-foot line in Maud 
 
 In the meadjow unlder the hall 
 To the death | for their na|tive land 
 
 also truncated three-foot 
 
 A Maud, | with her ex|quisite face 
 
 the four-foot in the Poefs Mind 
 
 In the heart I of the gar|den the mer|ry bird chants 
 
 truncated four-foot in Maud 
 
 A Singling alone | in the morn|ing of life 
 
 the five-foot in Maud 
 
 Till I well | could weep | for a time | so sor|did and mean 
 
 truncated five-foot in the same 
 
 A Knew | that the death i white cur j tain meant | but sleep 
 
 and also the six-foot 
 
 Did he fling | himself down ? | who knows ? | for a vast | speculajtion 
 had failed 
 
 which is the metre of the Northern Farmer 
 
 11 The Amoightjy's a taakjin of you | to 'issen, | my friend," | a said 
 
( 
 
 48 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 truncated six-foot 
 
 A Why | do they prate | of the bless|ings of peace ? We have 
 made | them a curse. 
 
 The six-foot anapaest is used in many important 
 poems, as the two Northern Farmers, the Grandmother, 
 the Higher Pantheism, Wages, a good deal of Maud, 
 Rizpah, First Quarrel, Northern Cobbler, Entail, Chil- 
 dren's Hospital, Maeldune, and the very irregular Revenge. 
 
 What are we to say of a line like the following, taken 
 from Wages ? 
 
 Glory of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song. 
 
 Regarded by itself it would naturally be classed as 
 truncated dactylic; but, just as we have seen that the four- 
 foot iambic can mask under the form of trochaic and vice 
 versa, so is it with anapaestic and dactylic. In order to 
 make sure of the metre of any given line, we have to 
 consider the general rhythm of the piece. If it comes 
 from a passage which is either generally anapaestic, or 
 which at any rate contains lines which can only be 
 explained as anapaestic, while they have no lines which 
 must necessarily be taken as dactylic, we may then safely 
 pronounce it anapaestic. 
 
 And since in this poem ( Wages) we find the indis- 
 putably anapaestic 
 
 The wa|ges of sin | is death : j if the wa|ges of virjtue be dust, 
 She desires | no isles | of the blest, j ncquiiet seats | of the just 
 
 it seems that we ought to scan the line under considera- 
 tion .as follows : 
 
 A Glo|ry of war|rior, glojry of or|ator, glo|ry of song. 
 
 Besides these main variations, we find the use of 
 feminine rhythm; as in Maud: 
 
 Ah what | shall I be | at fif(ty... 
 If I find | the world | so bit(ter. 
 
ANAPAESTIC METRES 49 
 
 And she knows | it not : | O, if | she knew (it, 
 To know | her beauty | might half | undo (it. 
 
 In the Welcome to Alexandra initial truncation is very 
 common : in fact there is only one line which commences 
 with the pure anapaest : 
 
 We are each | all Dane | in our welcome of thee. 
 
 In one line we have initial and internal truncation : 
 
 A Roll | and rejoice, | Ajujbilant voice, 
 
 A Roll | as a ground ,s well dashed | on the strand. 
 
 The two-foot trochaic ' Alexandra ' forms a refrain. 
 
 Maud xxvii. (Pt n. 5) consists of anapaestic lines, 
 varying from two to five feet in length, and showing 
 examples not only of initial truncation, as in 
 
 A Dead, | long dead 
 but of monosyllabic feet in other parts of the verse, e.g. 
 
 A Long I A dead. 
 And the hoofs | of the horsjes beat, | A beat. 
 
 The last section of Maud is regular five-foot anapaest. 
 
 In Break, break, break, we have three-foot anapaestic 
 arranged in verses of four lines. In two out of the four 
 verses the third line contains four feet, and in two the 
 first line is represented by the three monosyllables 
 'Break, break, break.' 
 
 We may compare Scott's four-foot dactylic : 
 
 March, | march, | Ettrick and | Teviotdale, 
 
 Why the deil | dinna ye march | forward in | order? 
 
 where the corresponding lines of the next verse 
 
 Come from the | hills where your | hirsels are | grazing, 
 Come from the | glen of the | buck and the | roe A 
 
 show that the monosyllables ' march,' ' march ' represent 
 dactyls, and that ' Teviotdale ' and ' dinna ye march ' 
 
50 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 must be slurred so as to be compressed into trisyllables. 
 See below on Dactylic Metre. 
 
 The song in Sea Fairies varies from three- to eight- 
 foot, and both initial and internal truncation are freely 
 used ; thus we have : 
 
 AWhith|er away? | A whith|er away? | A whith|er away? | A fly | 
 
 no more: 
 A Whith|er away? | A list|en and stay: | A mar|iner, marjiner, fly | 
 
 no more. 
 
 In the Islet the four-foot anapaest prevails : 
 A Whith|er, O whith|er, love, | shall we go 
 varied with three-foot 
 
 That it makes | one wea|ry to hear 
 and truncated two-foot 
 
 A No, | love, no 
 
 and complete five-foot running into pure iambic 
 
 With manjy a riv|ulet high | against | the sun 
 The fac|ets of | the glojrious mountain flash. 
 
 The Victim is mainly four-foot anapaestic, with di- 
 syllabic substitution : 
 
 A plague | upon | the peo|ple fell. 
 
 The priest | in hor|ror about | his al(tar 
 
 To Thor | and 0|din liftjed a hand. 
 
 The mothjer said, | They have ta|ken the child. 
 
 A Sud|denly from | him brake | his wife. 
 But some of the verses are followed by lines of two 
 feet, forming groups equivalent in rhythm to eight-foot 
 lines, e.g. : 
 
 A Help | us from famjine And plague | and strife. || A What | would 
 you have | of us? Hu|man life? 
 
 Perhaps, however, it may be said, Is it not easier to 
 
 take these as dactylic, dividing as follows? 
 
 Help us from | famine And | plague and | strife A • 
 What would you | have of us ? | Human | life A ? 
 
ANAPAESTIC METRES 5 I 
 
 the two last dactyls being represented by trochee and 
 long syllable ? The answer is that in either case the 
 metre will be metamorphous or disguised, and that we 
 shall best preserve the unity of the poem by interpreting 
 the disguise so as to agree with the undisguised corre- 
 sponding lines in the other stanzas, e.g. : 
 
 They have tajken our son, | They will have | his life. 
 
 Is he | your dear|est, Or I, | the wife? 
 
 As it is sometimes difficult to decide whether a line 
 should be classed as anapaestic or dactylic, so, at other 
 times, it might seem that an anapaestic line was made up 
 of amphibrachs. Thus Browning's line 
 
 I galloped, | Dirk galloped, | we galloped | all three A 
 might be scanned with four amphibrachs, the last trun- 
 cated : but if we look at other lines in the same piece, 
 such as : 
 
 Not a word | to each oth [er. We kept | the great pace, 
 Neck by neck, | stride by stride, | never chan|ging our place 1 
 
 we see that the true scansion of the first line is 
 
 I gal Hoped, Dirk galloped, we galloped all three 
 which also gives a more appropriate rhythm. The 
 amphibrach would suit well enough if the verb were 
 1 cantered,' but not for the desperate ride described. So 
 
 the lines 
 
 Distracted | with care A 
 For Phyllis | the fair A , 
 Since nothing | could move her, 
 Poor Damon | her lover 
 
 1 This line is an example of the harshness which often 
 characterises the anapaestic rhythm, when strong accented syllables 
 such as ' neck ' and ' stride ' are put into the unaccented part of the 
 foot. Of course such a rhythm is not employed without special 
 reason by great poets, compare Shelley's eerie phrase, 
 
 Stand rig|id with horlror; a loud | long hoarse cry. 
 
52 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 have been cited as amphibrachs, but the lines which 
 immediately follow 
 
 To a precjipice goes, 
 Where a leap | from above 
 Would soon finjish his woes 
 
 show that the true division of the former line is 
 
 Distractjed with care 
 and 
 
 Since noth|ing could move (her. 
 
 Similarly the apparent amphibrachs of Christabel : 
 
 That in the | dim forest 
 Thou heard'st a | low moaning, 
 And found'st a | bright lady | surpassingjly fair A 
 
 are preceded by the manifestly anapaestic 
 
 In the touch | of this bo|som there workjeth a spell 
 Which is lord | of thy utterance, Christ|abel 
 
 showing that the true scansion above is 
 That in | the dim for(esL 
 
 Similarly some lines in Southey's Lodore might be 
 read as made up of amphibrachs : 
 
 Collecting, | projecting, 
 
 Receding | and speeding, 
 
 Dividing | and gliding [ and sliding, 
 
 Retreating | and beating | and meeting | and sheeting 
 
 yet the general rhythm is undoubtedly anapaestic, as we 
 find in the ist stanza : 
 
 With its rush | and its roar 
 
 As manjy a time 
 
 They had seen | it before 
 
 and in the 2nd : 
 
 It runs I and it creeps 
 For Awhile, | till it sleeps 
 In its own | little lake; 
 
 l * 
 
ANAPAESTIC METRES 53 
 
 And thence | at departing, 
 Awakening and starting, 
 It runs | through the reeds, 
 And away | it proceeds 
 
 and the last stanza ends : 
 
 And so | never endjing but aljways descending, 
 Sounds and motions for ever and evjer are blend(ing 
 All at once | and all o'er | with a might y uproar : 
 And this j way the water comes down j at Lodore 1 . 
 
 I proceed now to give examples of anapaestic metres 
 from Matthew Arnold and Swinburne. Three-foot ana- 
 paestic without rhyme is a favourite metre with the former; 
 and his favourite variation is the monosyllabic first foot. 
 Compare Youth of Nature : 
 
 A Well | may we mourn | when the head 
 Of a salcred po |et lies low 
 In an age | which can read | them no more. 
 
 Rugby Chapel: 
 
 A Cold[ly, sadily descends 
 The au|tumn even ing. The field 
 
 A Strewn | with its dank | yellow drifts 
 Of withered leaves, | and the elms, 
 
 A Fade | into dimjness apace, 
 
 A Si|lent ; hardjly a shout 
 From a few | boys late j at their play ; 
 The lights | come out j in the street, 
 In the school-|room windows; but cold, 
 
 A Sol|emn, unlight'ed, austere, 
 Through the gathjering dark ness arise 
 The chap el 'walls, | in whose bound 
 
 A Thou, | my farther, art laid. 
 
 Swinburne's metre is far more rapid and is marked 
 by strong and often by internal rhymes. Take, as a 
 
 1 Compare above, p. 20 f., on the supposed use of the amphibrach 
 in iambic metre. 
 
54 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 specimen of two-foot mixed with six-foot anapaestic, 
 Off Shore : 
 
 As the veil | of the shrine 
 
 Of the tem|ple of old, 
 When dark|ness divine 
 
 Over noon|day was rolled, 
 So the heart | of the night | by the pulse | of the light | is 
 convulsed | and controlled. 
 
 And the sea's | heart groan(ing 
 i i 
 
 For glojries withdrawn, 
 
 And the waves' | mouths moan(ing 
 i i 
 
 All night | for the dawn, 
 
 Are uplift j as the hearts | and the mouths | of the singjers 
 
 on leajside and lawn. 
 
 A Child's Sleep supplies a specimen of masculine and 
 feminine three-foot with spondaic substitution : 
 
 As the moon | on the lake's | face flash(es 
 
 i i 
 
 So hapjly may gleam | at whiles 
 
 A dream | through the dear | deep lash(es 
 
 i i 
 
 Whereun|der a child's | eye smiles. 
 
 Four-foot masculine and feminine are found in Orei- 
 thyia : „ 
 
 For the heart | was mol|ten within | her to hear, 
 
 And her knees | beneath | her were loosjened for fear, 
 
 And her blood | fast-bound | as a frost- |bound wa(ter, 
 ii ii 
 
 And the soft | new bloom | of the green | earth's daugh(ter 
 ii ii 
 
 Wind- wast jed as blossom | of a tree 1 . 
 
 1 In this line there is a superfluous syllable either in the 2nd or 
 3rd foot, which has to be eliminated by slurring. Notice the 
 spondees in the preceding lines. 
 
ANAPAESTIC METRES 55 
 
 Storm and Battle has examples of four, five, and six-foot 
 anapaestic with spondaic substitution, 
 
 Shall the sea | give death | whom the land | gave birth? 
 zi ii 
 
 O strong | north wind | the pi! lot of cloud | and rain, 
 
 1 II 
 
 For the gift | we gave | thee what gift | hast thou given | us 
 
 again? 
 And the clang j of the sharp | shrill brass | through the burst | 
 
 of the wave | as it shocks x * 
 
 Rings clean | as the clear | wind's cry | through the roar | of 
 ii ii 
 
 the surge | on the rocks. 
 
 In the Ode to Efigland we have examples of seven-foot 1 
 and eight-foot anapaestic. The latter with its internal 
 rhyme is perhaps the most characteristic of Swinburne's 
 metres : 
 
 A light | that is more | than the sun|light, an air | that is 
 
 brighter than mor|ning's breath, 
 Clothes Engi land about | as the strong | sea clasps | her, and 
 
 an swers the word j that it saith. x x 
 
 A Dark|ness round | them, as iiron, bound | fell off | from ra|ces 
 
 of eldjer name, 
 A Slain | at sight | of her eyes | whose light | bids free|dom 
 
 light jen and burn | as flame. 
 
 1 In the preface to his translation of a chorus of the Birds, 
 Swinburne says that Aristophanes' 'marvellous metrical invention 
 of the anapaestic heptameter is almost exactly reproducible in 
 English, in which all variations of anapaestic, iambic, or trochaic 
 metre are as natural and pliable as all dactylic and spondaic forms 
 of verse are unnatural.' I quote a couple of lines : 
 
 All best | good things | that befall | men come | from us birds | 
 
 as is plain | to all rea(son 
 For first | we proclaim | and make known | to them spring | 
 
 and then winjter and au|tumn in sea(son. 
 
$6 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 Exercises on Chapter V. 
 
 Pleaseth you ponder your suppliants' plaint, 
 Caused of wrong and cruel constraint ; 
 Which I your poor vassall daily endure, 
 And, but your goodness the same recure, 
 Am like for desperate deed to die, 
 Through felonous force of mine enemie. 
 
 Spenser, Oak and Briar. 
 See the Furies arise ; 
 See the snakes that they rear, 
 How they hiss in their hair ; 
 And the sparkles that flash from their eyes. Dryden. 
 
 Thou who art bearing my buckler and bow, 
 
 Should the soldiers of Saul look away from the foe, 
 
 Stretch me that moment in blood at thy feet. 
 
 Mine be the doom which they dared not to meet. Byron. 
 
 Sweet and low, sweet and low, 
 
 Wind of the western sea, 
 Low, low, breathe and blow, 
 
 Wind of the western sea ! 
 Over the rolling waters go, 
 Come from the dying moon, and blow, 
 
 Blow him again to me ! 
 While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps. 
 
 Princess. 
 
 And or ever that evening ended, a great gale blew, 
 
 And a wave like the wave that is raised by an earthquake grew, 
 
 Till it smote on their hulls and their sails and their masts and 
 
 their flags, 
 And the whole sea plunged and fell on the shot-shattered navy 
 
 of Spain, 
 And the little Revenge herself went down by the island crags 
 To be lost evermore in the main. The Revenge. 
 
ANAPAESTIC METRES 57 
 
 She steals to the window, and looks at the sand, 
 
 And over the sand at the sea ; 
 
 And her eyes are set in a stare ; 
 
 And anon there breaks a sigh, 
 
 And anon there drops a tear 
 
 From a sorrow-clouded eye, 
 
 And a heart sorrow-laden, 
 
 A long, long sigh, 
 
 For the cold strange eyes of a little Mermaiden, 
 
 And the gleam of her golden hair. M. Arnold. 
 
 Yes, we arraign her, but she, 
 
 The weary Titan, with deaf 
 
 Ears, and labour-dimmed eyes, 
 
 Regarding neither to right 
 
 Nor left, goes passively by, 
 
 Staggering on to her goal. Heinis Grave. 
 
 Once I went to the woods with Rose ; 
 
 Rose, of course, was nothing to me; 
 We talked — of something I suppose ; 
 
 What, has escaped my memory. 
 
 # * * * 
 
 Pearls we trod upon, made of dew ; 
 
 Sat 'neath canopies of green rushes ; 
 All the birds we listened to 
 
 Rose called nightingales, I called thrushes. 
 
 Sir G. Young. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 DACTYLIC METRES. 
 
 The dactylic measure is less common in English 
 poetry than the anapaestic. It is varied by the sub- 
 stitution of trochee for dactyl in all the feet and by the 
 prefixing of a hypermetrical syllable at the beginning, 
 and the omission of two unaccented syllables at the end, 
 as in Hood : 
 
 Take her up | tenderly, 
 
 Lift her with | care A , 
 Fashioned so | slenderly, 
 
 Young, and so | fair A • 
 
 Scott : 
 
 Kingsley 
 
 Come away, | come away, 
 
 Hark to the | summons, 
 Come away, | come away, 
 
 Gentles and | commons. 
 Come from deep | glen and 
 
 From) mountain so | rocky, 
 The) war-pipe and | pennon 
 
 Are) at Inver|lochy. 
 
 White were the | moorlands 
 And) frozen be | fore her, 
 
 Green were the | moorlands 
 And) blooming bejhind her. 
 
DACTYLIC METRES 59 
 
 It will be observed that, when a line begins with the 
 hypermetrical syllable, the preceding line frequently ends 
 with a trochee, so that the effect is simply to complete 
 the dactylic rhythm. Sometimes we even find two hyper- 
 metrical syllables, when the final dactyl of the preceding 
 line is represented by a long syllable, as in Hood's 
 
 The) bleak wind of | March A 
 Made her) tremble and | shiver, 
 
 But) not the dark | arch A 
 
 Nor the) black- flowing | river. 
 
 It is easy to understand how this variation of the 
 dactylic should pass unperceived into anapaestic metre, 
 like the four-foot trochaic into four-foot iambic. Thus, in 
 Scott's Pibroch of Donald Dhu, the anapaestic lines 
 
 Leave untendjed the herd, 
 
 The flock | without shel(ter, 
 Leave the corpse | uninterred, 
 
 The bride | at the al(tar 
 
 are preceded and followed by the dactylic 
 
 Come, every | hill-plaid, and 
 
 Trjle heart tha't | wears one, 
 Come, every | steel blade, and 
 
 Strong hand that | bears one, 
 
 Leave the deer, | leave the steer, 
 
 Leave nets and | barges, 
 Come with your | fighting gear, 
 
 Broadswords and | targes. 
 
 Tennyson in Merlin and the Gleam has two-foot dactylic : 
 
 Then with a | melody 
 Stronger and | statelier 
 Led me at | length A 
 To the) city and | palace 
 Of) Arthur the | King A ; 
 Touched at the | golden 
 Cross of the I churches, 
 
6<D MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 Flashed on the | tournament, 
 Flickered and | bickered 
 From) helmet to | helmet, 
 And) last on the | forehead 
 Of) Arthur the | blameless 
 Rested the | gleam A . 
 
 In Kapiolani we have two-foot mixed with four-foot and 
 eight-foot dactylic : 
 
 When from the | terrors of | nature a | people have | fashioned 
 
 and | worship a | spirit of | evil, 
 Blest be the | voice of the \ teacher who | calls to them, 
 1 Set yourselves | free A .' 
 * * * * 
 Long as the | lava-light 
 Glares from the | lava-lake 
 Dazing the | starlight ; 
 Long as the | silvery | vapour in | daylight 
 
 Over the | mountain 
 Floats, will the | glory of | Kapio|lani be | mingled with | 
 either on | Hawai|ee A . 
 
 George Meredith has an example of four-foot dactylic, 
 with trochaic or spondaic substitution in the 3rd or 4th 
 foot and truncation in the alternate lines, in Juggling 
 Jerry, in which, as often in trisyllabic metres, the accents 
 are rather tortured : 
 
 Pitch here the | tent, while the | old horse | grazes, 
 
 1 1 
 
 By the old | hedge-side we'll j halt a | stage A ; 
 
 IOO I o o 
 
 It's nigh my | last ajbove the | daisies, 
 
 10 o 
 
 My next | leaf will be | man's blank | page A • 
 21 11 
 
 Yes, my old | girl ! and it's | no use | crying : 
 
 1 1 
 
 Juggler, I constable, | King, must | bow A . 
 
 One that out | -juggles | all's been | spying 
 
 Long to have | me, and he | has me | now A • 
 
DACTYLIC METRES 6 1 
 
 He has a similar example of five-foot dactylic with 
 trochaic substitution in the last three feet, and slurring 
 of two short syllables in the 6th and 8th lines: 
 
 Shy as the | squirrel and | wayward | as the | swallow, 
 
 Swift as the | swallow a|long the | river's | light A , 
 1 Circleting the | surface to | meet his | mirrored | winglets, 
 
 Fleeter she | seems in her | stay than | in her | flight A . 
 Shy as the | squirrel that | leaps a'mong the | pine-top^, 
 
 1 Wayward as the | Swallow overhead at | set of | sun A , 
 She whom I | love is | hard to | catch and | conquer, 
 
 *Hard, but O the | ] glory of the | winning | were she | won A ! 
 
 G. Meredith 2 . 
 
 Matthew Arnold has two-foot in his Bacchanalia : 
 
 See on the | cumbered plain, 
 
 Clearing a | stage A , 
 
 Scattering the | past about, 
 
 Comes the new | age A . 
 
 Bards make new- 1 poems, 
 
 Thinkers new | schools A , • 
 
 Statesmen new | systems, 
 
 Critics new | rules A . 
 
 All things begin again, 
 
 Life is their | prize A , 
 
 Earth with their | deeds they fill, 
 
 Fill with their | cries A • 
 
 Tennyson has a splendid metre which might be de- 
 scribed as truncated seven-foot, alternating with six-foot, 
 either of the dactylic or anapaestic metre. The last 
 
 1 A superfluous syllable has to be slurred in this foot. 
 
 2 Sir G. Young notes here that * no doubt Meredith took this 
 metre from George Darley's song 
 
 Sweet in her green dell the flower of beauty slumbers, 
 Lulled by the faint breezes sighing through her hair ; . 
 
 Sleeps she and hears not the melancholy numbers 
 Breathed to my sad lute 'mid the lonely air.' 
 
62 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 line of the stanza is rather in favour of the latter explana- 
 tion, since we must otherwise assume anacrusis. 
 
 Banner of England, not for a season, O banner of Britain, hast 
 
 thou 
 
 Floated in conquering battle or flapt to the battle cry. 
 * * * * * 
 
 Shot through the staff or the halyard, but ever we raised thee anew, 
 
 And ever upon the topmost roof our banner of England blew. 
 
 Trochaic, varied by the intermixture of dactyls, is 
 
 found in Boadtcea, which is mainly eight-foot trochaic, 
 
 sometimes complete, but usually truncated, with one or 
 
 more dactyls in the last three feet : 
 
 While a|bout the | shore of | Mona || those Ne|ronian | legiona|ries. 
 Girt by \ half the | tribes of | Britain, || near the | colony | Camulo|- 
 
 dune A . - • 
 
 In the following we have four consecutive dactyls : 
 
 There the | hive of | Roman | liars || worship a j gluttonous | em- 
 peror | idiot. 
 
 I think the rhythm would have been improved by omit- 
 ting emperor , thus making a truncated eight-foot : but the 
 final dactyl, giving eight complete feet, is also found in 
 
 Hear it, \ gods ! the | gods have ] heard it, || O I|cenian, | O Corit|a- 
 
 nian ! 
 
 • '•.'*.-♦ • 
 
 Tho' the | Roman | eagle | shadow thee, || tho' the | gathering | 
 enemy | narrow thee, 
 
 ***** 
 
 Up my | Britons, | on my | chariot, [| on my | chargers, | trample 
 them | under us. 
 
 In one line we find three dactyls in the first half: 
 
 Bloodily, | bloodily | fall the | battle-axe, || unexjhausted, injexorajble. 
 
 There is only one line in which the dactylic substitution 
 is not found in the last four feet : 
 
 There they | dwelt and | there they | rioted ; || there, | there, they | 
 dwell no | more. A 
 
DACTYLIC METRES 
 
 63 
 
 </ 
 
 Exercises on Chapter VI. 
 
 They now to fight are gone, 
 Armour on armour shone, 
 Drum now to drum did groan, 
 
 To hear was wonder, 
 That with the cries they make, 
 The very earth did quake, 
 Trumpet to trumpet spake, 
 
 Thunder to thunder. 
 
 Flashed all their sabres bare, 
 Flashed, as they turned in air, 
 Sabring the gunners there, 
 Charging an army, while 
 All the world wondered. 
 
 Drayton. 
 
 Tennyson. 
 
 Come from the hills where your hirsels are grazing, 
 
 Come from the glen of the buck and the roe ; 
 Come to the crag where the beacon is blazing, 
 Come with the buckler, the lance, and the bow. 
 Trumpets are sounding, 
 War-steeds are bounding, 
 Stand to your arms and march in good order. 
 England shall many a day 
 Tell of the bloody fray, 
 When the blue bonnets came over the Border. Scott. 
 
 Where shall the lover rest 
 
 Whom the fates sever, 
 From his true maiden's breast 
 
 Parted for ever? 
 Where, through groves deep and high 
 
 Sounds the far billow, 
 Where early violets die 
 
 Under the willow. 
 
 Scott. 
 
 Weary way-wanderer, languid and sick at heart, 
 Travelling painfully over the rugged road, 
 Wild-visaged wanderer ! God help thee, wretched one. 
 
 Southey. 
 
64 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 When, like the early rose, 
 
 Eileen Aroon ! 
 Beauty in childhood blows, 
 
 Eileen Aroon ! 
 When, like a diadem, 
 Buds blush around the stem, 
 Which is the fairest gem? — 
 
 Eileen Aroon. G. Griffin. 
 
 Could I but live again 
 
 Twice my life over, 
 Would I once strive again? 
 
 Would not I cover 
 Quietly all of it — 
 
 Greed and ambition — 
 So from the pall of it, 
 
 Pass to fruition? 
 
 Browning, Pisgah Sights. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 MIXED AND DOUBTFUL METRES 1 . 
 
 We have already had under consideration poems 
 consisting of lines of varying length, whether this was 
 caused by the use of truncation or anacrusis or feminine 
 ending, where the number of feet remains unchanged, 
 and there is no substitution of one foot for another ; or 
 by a difference in the number of feet, as in the Spenserian 
 stanza, in which an Alexandrine comes at the end of 
 eight heroic lines, or to a greater extent in such a poem 
 as Milton's Hymn on the Nativity, which combines 
 three-foot, four-foot, five-foot, and six-foot iambic lines. 
 We have also seen examples of the interchange of feet : 
 trochee, anapaest, and dactyl for iamb ; iamb and dactyl 
 for trochee, etc. In this chapter I deal with poems in 
 which the metre is not simply altered numerically by 
 embracing more or fewer feet, nor rendered momen- 
 tarily ambiguous by the substitution of alien feet, but 
 (i) where one portion is of distinctly different type from 
 another ; and (2) where the irregularity of stress is great 
 enough to cause serious doubt as to the general character 
 
 1 These correspond to the asynartete measures of the Greeks. 
 
 m. 5 
 
66 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 of the metre. Of (i) we have an example in the Fairy's 
 song in M. N. Z>., 
 
 Over hill, | over dale, 
 
 I O O I 
 
 Thoro' bush, | thoro ' % briar, 
 
 O O T 0*1 
 
 Over park, | over pale, 
 
 I 1 
 
 Thoro' flood, | thoro' fire, 
 
 I O O I 
 
 I do | wander | every | where A , 
 
 10 I O 10 I 
 
 Swifter | than the | moones | sphere A 
 
 10 10 10 I 
 
 where Coleridge remarks on ' the delightful effect of the 
 sweet transition to the trochaic metre' in the fifth line 1 . 
 
 1 The Quarto and Folio here have the cacophonous 'moon's,' for 
 which Steevens suggested (i) the old-English 'moones,' which is 
 supported by 'whales' in L. L. L., 
 
 To show | his teeth | as white | as wha|les bone, 
 
 and also in Spenser's F. Q. in. i. 15, and ' nightes ' in Buckhurst's 
 Induction, 9, 
 
 With night|es starres, | thick pow|dred everywhere, 
 
 and in .Surrey's sonnet, quoted by R. Morris {Hist. Eng. Gr. § 103), 
 
 The night |es car | the stars | about | doth bring. 
 
 See other examples in Schipper, II. 78 f. 
 
 Steevens' second suggestion was 'moony,' for which he quotes 
 ' moony sphere ' from Sidney's Arcadia. In itself \ moones sphere ' 
 seems better to express the motion of the material sphere, which was 
 supposed to carry the moon with it in its revolution : but if 'moony 
 sphere ' was used by Sidney, it may possibly have become a familiar 
 phrase. Several of the Shakespearian editors prefer to keep the 
 reading 'moon's,' justifying it by such lines as that from the witches' 
 incantation in Macbeth : 
 
 Toad, that under cold stone 
 Days and nights has thirty-one 
 Sweltered venom sleeping got, 
 Boil thou first i' the charmed pot; 
 
MIXED AND DOUBTFUL METRES 67 
 
 This change of type is of course more common in 
 longer poems, to express a change of sentiment, as in 
 Maud, the prevailing metre of which is anapaestic, 
 
 A voice I by the cejdar tree 
 In the meadjow unider the Hall ! 
 She is singling an air | that is known j to me, 
 A passjionate bal|lad gall|ant and gay, 
 A marjtial song | like a trumpjet's call ; 
 A Singling alone | in the morn | of life, 
 In the hap|py morn|ing of life | and of May 
 
 but this is changed in section 1 7 into trochaic, 
 
 Go not, j happy | day A , 
 From the | shining | fields A , 
 Go not, I happy | day A , 
 Till the I maiden | yields A 
 
 and in section 18 into iambic, 
 
 4. O, art I thou sighing | for Lebanon 
 
 6. In the | long breeze | that streams | to thy | delicjious East, 
 3. Sighing I for Lebjanon, 
 Dark cejdar? 
 
 5. Is that I enchant Jed moan | only | the swell 
 
 Of the I long waves , that roll | in yonder bay? 
 
 So the Vision of Sin begins with an iambic section, 
 
 I had I a visiion when | the night j was late: 
 A youth I came Hiding toward | a paljace gate, 
 
 but the diphthong in cold ( = co-oold) is not the same as the simple 
 00 in moon, and the rhythm which may be appropriate for the expres- 
 sion of the witches' malignity is not necessarily appropriate for the 
 innocent playfulness of the fairies. Nor indeed am I altogether 
 satisfied that ' cold ' is right even in Macbeth, though no doubt there 
 is something very effective in the repetition of the long vowel in the 
 monosyllables toad, cold, stone. Still, if Shakespeare wrote 'coldest 
 stone,' it is the commonest of corruptions for the second si to be 
 omitted. 
 
 5—2 
 
68 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 which changes in the 2nd section into trochaic with 
 frequent dactylic substitution, 
 
 Then me[thought I | heard a | mellow | sound A , 
 
 Gathering | up from | all the | lower | ground A , 
 
 100 
 
 Narrowing | into | where they | sat assembled 
 
 100 
 
 Low vo|luptuous i music | winding | trembled. . . 
 
 100 
 
 Then they | started | from their | places, 
 Moved with | violence, I changed in j hue A , 
 
 10 o 
 
 Caught each | other with | wild gri] maces, 
 
 100 
 
 Half invisible | to the | view A , 
 100 
 
 Wheeling | with prejcipitate | paces. 
 
 10 o 
 
 The 3rd section returns to five-foot iambic, and the 
 4th is in truncated four-foot trochaic, 
 
 Wrinkled | ostler, | grim and | thin A ! 
 
 Here is | custom | come your | way A ; 
 Take my | brute and | lead him | in A , 
 
 Stuff his I ribs with | mouldy | hay A . 
 
 So the Choric Song of the Lotos- Eaters is for the 
 most part iambic of varying length, but the 4th section 
 begins with the trochaic 
 
 Hateful I is the | dark blue | sky A 
 Vaulted | o'er the | dark blue | sea A 
 
 and the 8th section introduces the truncated seven- and 
 
 eight-foot trochaics, 
 
 We have | had e|nough of [ action | and of | motion | we A , 
 Rolled to I starboard, \ rolled to | larboard, | when the | surge 
 
 was [ seething | free A , 
 Where the | wallowing | monster j spouted | his foam-|fountains | 
 
 in the | sea A . 
 
 The Ode on Wellington is a wonderful blending of 
 anapaest, iamb, and trochee. Of the first we have a 
 
MIXED AND DOUBTFUL METRES 69 
 
 sample in the opening lines, which are also marked by 
 internal truncation, 
 
 A Burjy the Great | A Duke 
 
 With an empire's lam;enta(tion, 
 Let us bur y the Great | A Duke 
 
 To the noise | of the mounting | of a mightjy na(tion 
 
 and in the 5 th section, 
 
 A Let I the hell | be tolled : 
 And a revjerent peo!ple behold 
 The towjering car, | the sajble steeds : 
 
 A Bright | let it be | with its blajzoned deeds, 
 
 A Dark | in its fu[neral fold. 
 
 A Let I the bell | be tolled : 
 And a deep er knell | in the heart | be knolled, 
 And the sound | of the sorjrowing anjthem rolled 
 Through the dome | of the goljden cross, 
 And the volljeying can non thunjder his loss. 
 
 Iambic rhythm is found in the 3rd and other sections, 
 varying from two feet to five feet, 
 
 Lead out | the page|ant: sad | and slow, 
 
 As fits I an u|nivers|al woe, 
 
 Let the ! long, long | processjion go, 
 
 And let | the sorr owing crowd | about | it grow, 
 
 And let | the mourn|ful marjtial in u sic blow; 
 
 The last | great Englishman | is low. 
 
 A peojple's voice, 
 
 The proof | and echjo of | all hujman fame, 
 A peojple's voice, | when they | rejoice 
 At civjic revjel and pomp | and game, 
 Attest I their great | commanjder's claim. 
 
 Trochaic metre is found in the 6th section, varied by 
 initial and internal anacrusis : 
 
 tr. 6 — Who is | he that | cometh || like an | honoured | guest A 
 With) banner | and with | music, || with) soldier | and with | 
 
 priest A , 
 With a J nation j weeping |j and) breaking | on my | rest A ? 
 
70 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 tr. 4 — This is | he that | far a|way A 
 
 A)gainst the | myriads | of As|saye A 
 Clashed with his ) fiery | few and | won A ; 
 And) under |neath an [other | sun A 
 Warring | on a | later | day A 
 Round af |frighted | Lisbon | drew A 
 The) treble | works, the j vast de|signs A . 
 
 Shelley has a mixture of trochaic and iambic in the 
 Skylark : 
 
 frock. 3. Like a | high-born | maiden 
 
 3. In a I palace | tower, 
 
 3. Soothing I her love-|laden 
 
 3. Soul in I secret | hour 
 iamb. 6. With mu|sic sweet | as love | which overflows | her 
 bower 
 
 unless we prefer to describe this as trochaic with 
 anacrusis, as in the following : 
 
 We) look be|fore and | after 
 
 And) pine for | what is | not A : 
 Our sin|cerest | laughter 
 
 With some | pain is | fraught A . 
 
 There appears to be no objection to mixture of 
 metres in long poems made up of parts or sections, which 
 may vary much in tone ; nor again in short poems, if 
 one metre runs easily into another, as is the case with 
 short iambic and trochaic metres. But I feel a little 
 doubt about such a poem as Lamb's Old Familiar Faces, 
 the general metre of which is five-foot trochaic with 
 dactylic substitution, as in 
 
 Like an injgrate I | left my | friend abruptly. 
 
 IOOIOIO I 010 
 
 I will give the scansion of the 2nd verse and then 
 examine some doubtful lines : 
 
 I have been | laughing, | I have | been ca|rousing, 
 
MIXED AND DOUBTFUL METRES yi 
 
 Drinking late, | sitting late [ with my | bosom | cronies; 
 
 I O O IOO XO 10 10 
 
 All, all are | gone, the | old fa miliar | faces. t^ * 
 
 I O I 
 
 C 
 
 In the last verse the ist line should probably be| m u. J 
 scanned as follows : \~\ ^ 
 
 How some | they have | died, and | some they've | left me. 
 
 IO 10 9 I O 10 
 
 The 2nd line appears to have an extra syllable at the 
 beginning, and a dactyl in 4th foot : 
 
 And) some are | taken | from me; | all are dejparted. 
 
 I O 10 I o 20010 
 
 It is a question whether the 2nd line of the ist verse 
 should be taken as six-foot trochaic or five-foot with a 
 double anacrusis, 
 
 In my | days of | childhood, | in my | joyful | school-days. 
 
 Now consider these two lines : 
 
 Ghost-like I | paced round the | haunts of my | childhood. 
 Friend of my | bosom, thou | more than a | brother. 
 
 It seems to me that these can only be divided as I 
 have done, and described as four-foot dactylic. They 
 are not bad lines in themselves, but they seem to me out 
 of harmony with the neighbouring lines, without the 
 justification of any change of sentiment. 
 
 Another example of a doubtful metre is 754* Revenge^ 
 which I was at first inclined to regard as a mixture of 
 anapaestic and trochaic, as follows; 
 
 anap. 6. At Flojres in | the Azores || Sir Richjard Gren-j 
 ville lay, 
 7. And a pinjnace like | a fluttered bird || came 
 
 flyjing from far | away: 
 6. ' Spanish ships | of war | at sea, || we have sightjed 
 fiflty three.' 
 
72 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 troch. + 3 repeated. Then) s ware Lord | Thomas | Howard, || "Fore) 
 
 God I | am no | coward, 
 troch. 4 — repeated. But I | cannot | meet them | here A , || for my | 
 ships are | out of | gear A 
 And the | half my | men are | sick A . li I must | 
 
 fly, but | follow | quick A . 
 We are | six ships j of the | line A ,11 can we J fight 
 with | fifty | three A?' 
 
 The trochaic quality might seem to be preserved 
 through the 2nd and 3rd sections, as 
 
 troch. 4 — repeated. But Sir j Richard | bore in | hand A || all his | 
 sick men | from the | land A , 
 Very | careful jly and | slow A , 
 troch. 4. Men of | Bide|ford in | Devon. 
 
 The sections which follow are predominantly ana- 
 paestic, as in 5, 
 
 Sir Rich|ard spoke | and he laughed, | and we roared | a hurrah, | 
 and so. 
 
 Section 11 has two-foot, three-foot, and four-foot lines: 
 
 We have fought | such a fight | for a day | and a night 
 
 As may nev|er be fought | again. 
 
 We have won | great glo|ry, my men! 
 
 And a day | less or more 
 
 At sea I or ashore, 
 
 We die j — does it matt|er when? 
 
 But the 1 2th section, beginning with anapaest, seems 
 to pass again into trochaic : 
 
 And the gun|ner said | 'Ay, Ay,' || but the | 
 sea|men made | reply, 
 troch. 4 — 'We have | children, | we have | wives A , 
 And the | Lord hath | spared our | lives A ; 
 8 — We will I make the | Spaniard j promise, | if 
 we I yield, to | let us | go A : 
 We shall | live to | fight a|gain A || and to | strike 
 an|other | blow A .' 
 
MIXED AND DOUBTFUL METRES 73 
 
 The 1 4th section is again strongly anapaestic : 
 
 And they stared | at the dead | that had been | so val|iant 
 
 and true, 
 And had hold|en the power | and glojry of Spain | so cheap. 
 
 On further consideration, however, I think it better 
 to explain the whole poem as anapaestic of varying 
 quality, sometimes aggressive, as in the line 
 
 And they stared | at the dead | that had been | so valiant 
 and true, 
 
 sometimes of a more subdued tone, as in the lines which 
 are classified above as trochaic, e.g. 
 
 Then sware | Lord Thom|as How|ard, 'Fore God | I am I no 
 
 co\v(ard, 
 But I can [not meet | them here, | for my ships | are out | of 
 
 gear 
 And the half | my men | are sick. | I must fly, | but foljlow quick. 
 
 But Sir Richjard bore | in hand | all his sick | men from | 
 the land, 
 Very care|fully | and slow, 
 Men of Bidjeford | in Dev(on. 
 
 We will make | the Spaniard prom(ise, | if we yield, | to let | 
 us go. 
 
 Campbell's Ode on Nelson is iambic with free ana- 
 paestic substitution. The stanza is made up of nine 
 three-foot lines, with the exception of the 5th and 
 9th lines, which need further consideration. Take the 
 following stanza : 
 
 Now joy I old Eng land raise 
 For the ti dings of | thy might 
 
 o 1 
 
 By the fest|al cities' blaze, 
 001 
 While the wine;-cup shines | in light ; 
 
74 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 5 And yet [ amidst | that joy | and uproar 
 
 1 
 
 Let us think | of them | that sleep 
 
 1 
 
 Full man|y a fathjom deep 
 
 O O I 
 
 By thy wild | and stormjy steep, 
 
 1 
 
 9 A El|sinore. 
 
 Here the 5th line has four feet, ending with an anapaest, 
 as in the second, third, fifth, sixth and seventh stanzas, 
 
 It was ten | of A|pril morn | by the chime. 
 
 Hearts of oak | our captjains cried | when each gun. 
 
 So peace | instead | of death | let us bring. 
 
 As death j withdrew | his shades | from the day. 
 
 Soft sigh I the winds | of heaven | o'er their grave. 
 
 Again, the 9th might be called an accentual cretic, that 
 is, a trisyllabic foot with stress on the first and last, and 
 none on the middle syllable. So we have in the fourth 
 and sixth stanzas 
 
 Light the gloom. 
 
 Died away. 
 
 But if we look at the other verses we find sometimes 
 an anapaest in the 9th line, as 'For a time,' 'Of the 
 sun,' 'To our king,' and a cretic ending the 5th, as in 
 the first and fourth stanzas, 
 
 And her arms | along | the deep | proudly shone. 
 
 001 I O I 
 
 Their shots | along | the deep | slowly boom. 
 
 10 1 
 
 There can be no doubt as to the very fine effect of such 
 cretics as 'Elsinore' and 'slowly boom.' But it is more 
 difficult to find the key of this variation. Did Campbell 
 mean 'Elsinore' and 'slowly boom' to stand for two 
 foot iambic with initial truncation ? But this would have 
 been to break what seems the law, that the last line should 
 
MIXED AND DOUBTFUL METRES 75 
 
 consist of one foot, and the 5 th of four. As regards this 
 latter, we might perhaps be inclined to crush the four 
 light syllables ' along the deep ' into one foot ; but then 
 must we not do the same with the syllables 'of April 
 morn' in the 2nd stanza, which would reduce that line 
 to three feet ? In any case it would give a rhythm very 
 unlike 
 
 As death | withdrew | his shades | from the day. 
 
 On the whole I think it is better to treat the cretic as 
 a single foot, replacing the anapaest, as the spondee often 
 replaces an iamb. We are not to neglect the stress on 
 the 1 st syllable but to make it weaker than that on the 
 last. The lightness of the preceding syllables favours 
 the cretic, just as a preceding pyrrhic favours a 
 spondee. 
 
 The metre of the following odes from Mr Gilbert 
 Murray's translation of the Hippolytus and the Bacchae 
 does not explain itself at first sight. There is no doubt 
 as to the rhythmical movement of the first line, which 
 divides naturally into three quartets, with stresses 
 0010, something like the first three feet of the 
 Horatian 
 
 Miserarum est | neque amori | dare ludum | neque dulci. 
 
 In the 2nd and 4th lines the final short syllable is 
 wanting in the 2nd and 3rd division ; in the 3rd line, 
 one of the initial unstressed syllables of the second 
 division is wanting. In other lines the 1st and 3rd 
 divisions are pure anapaests, the 2nd division keeping its 
 final unstressed syllable, which we may now, I think, 
 identify as a feminine ending: thus 
 
 Yea, beyond | that Pill(ar | of the End. 
 
76 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 The metre then may be described as three-foot ana- 
 paestic with internal feminine ending, 
 
 Could I take (me | to some cav(ern, | for mine hi(ding, 
 
 001 001 001 
 
 In the hill(tops, | where the Sun j scarce hath trod ; 
 
 001 001 O OI 
 
 Or a cloud (make | the home (of | mine abi(ding, 
 
 001 01 001 
 
 As a bird (a|mong the bird-|droves of God ! 
 
 001 O 01 O 01 
 
 Could I wing (me | to my rest (a|mid the roar 
 
 001 001 001 
 
 Of the deep (A|driat(ic, | or the shore, 
 
 001 OI 00 1 
 
 Where the wa(ter | of Erid(a|nus is clear, | 
 
 O 01 001 001 
 
 And Pha(e|thon's sad sis(ters, | by his grave, 
 
 1 001 001 
 
 Weep in(to | the riv(er, | and each tear | 
 
 II 1 1 
 
 A Gleams (a | drop of amb(er | in the wave. 
 
 2 1 1 
 
 To the strand (of | the Daughters | of the Sun (set, 
 
 001 01 001 
 
 The Ap(ple-jtree, the sing(ing | and the gold, 
 
 01 001 001 
 
 Where the mar(i|ner must stay (him | from his on(set, 
 
 OOIOOI 001 
 
 And the red (wave | is tran(quil, j as of old; 
 
 0.01 01 001 
 
 Yea, beyond | that Pill(ar | of the End x 
 
 001 01 001 
 
 That Atjlas guard(eth, | would I wend ; 
 
 O I I O I 
 
 Where a voice (of | living wa(ters | never ceas(eth 
 
 01 OOI 001 
 
 In God's (qui|et gard(en | by the sea, 
 
 1 1 OOI 
 
 And Earth (the | ancient life(-giv|er increas(eth 
 
 O I 102,001 
 
 Joy among | the mead(ows, | like a tree. 
 
 001 01 OOI 
 
 Hippolytus, p. 39. 
 
 The initial anapaest is represented by iamb in 11. 6, by 
 spondee in 1. 9, by long syllable in 1. 10. 
 
MIXED AND DOUBTFUL METRES yj 
 
 The chorus in the Bacchae, p. 85, is of the same metre : 
 
 But the timb(rel, | the timb(rel | was another's, 
 
 And away (to 1 | Mother Rhe(a'| it must wend; 
 And to our | holy sing(ing | from the Moth(er's 
 001 001 
 
 The mad | Satyrs carr(ied | it, to blend 
 In the dancling and | the cheer 
 Of our third | and perjfect year; 
 And it serves (Di|ony(sus | in the end ! 
 
 Meredith's poems given above on pp. 60 and 61, and 
 Darley's song on p. 61 n., may also be reckoned among 
 doubtful metres. 
 
 Exercises on Chapter VII. 
 
 Holy water will I pour 
 Into every spicy flower 
 Of the laurel shrubs that hedge it around. 
 In your eye there is death, 
 There is frost irf your breath. 
 
 The Poet's Mind. 
 
 Clearly the blue river chimes in its flowing 
 
 Under my eye; 
 Warmly and broadly the south winds are blowing 
 
 Over the sky. 
 One after another the white clouds are fleeting; 
 Every heart this May morning in joyance is beating 
 
 Full merrily ; 
 Yet all things must die. 
 The stream will cease to flow; 
 
 The wind will cease to blow 
 
 ***** 
 
 For all things must die, 
 
 All things must die. All Things will Die. 
 
 Pray, reader, have you eaten ortolans 
 
 Ever in Italy? 
 Recall how cooks there cook them, for my plan's 
 
 To — lyre with spit ally. 
 
 1 Is this a misprint for 'from'? 
 
78 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 They pluck the birds — some dozen luscious lumps, 
 
 Or more or fewer — 
 Then roast them, heads by heads and rumps by rumps, 
 
 Stuck on a skewer. Browning. 
 
 Wild wild wind, wilt thou never cease thy sighing? 
 
 Dark dark night, wilt thou never wear away? 
 Cold cold church in thy death sleep lying, 
 
 Thy Lent is past, thy Passion here, but not thine Easter-day. 
 
 KlNGSLEY. 
 
 When Britain first at Heaven's command 
 
 Arose from out the azure main, 
 This was the charter of her land, 
 
 And guardian angels sang the strain: 
 Rule, Britannia ! Britannia rules the waves ! 
 
 Britons never shall be slaves. Thomson. 
 
 In the hour of my distress, 
 When temptations me oppress, 
 And when I my sins confess, 
 
 Sweet Spirit, comfort me. Herrick 
 
 Come away, come away, death, 
 And in sad cypress let me be laid; 
 Fly away, fly away, breath : 
 
 I am slain by a fair, cruel maid. 
 My shroud of white, stuck all with yew, 
 
 O prepare it ! 
 My part of death, no one so true 
 
 Did share it. Shakespeare. 
 
 Whither, O splendid ship, thy white sails crowding. 
 
 Leaning across the bosom of the urgent West, 
 That fearest not sea rising, nor sky clouding, 
 
 Whither away, fair rover, and what thy quest? 
 
 Ah ! soon when winter has all our vales opprest, 
 When skies are cold and misty, and hail is hurling, 
 
 Wilt thou glide 1 on the blue Pacific, or rest 
 In a summer haven asleep, thy white sails furling. 
 
 R. Bridges. 
 
 1 The accents are in the original. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ENGLISH ADAPTATIONS OF CLASSICAL METRES. 
 
 It may be well to add a few words here in reference 
 to English adaptations of classical metres, especially the 
 Hexameter and Pentameter, for a full account of which 
 I must refer to Chapters on English Metre, ed. 2, 
 pp. 260 — 293. Suffice it to say here that the great 
 outburst of these metres in the last century originated in 
 the imitation of the German hexameters of Voss and 
 Goethe by Southey, Coleridge, and Longfellow, and was 
 carried to its highest point by Clough and Kingsley. The 
 main points in which the English hexameter differs from 
 the classical (of which the scheme is 
 
 
 with the very rare substitution of a spondee for the 5th 
 dactyl) are (1) the substitution of accent for quantity, 
 (2) the admission of accentual trochee, and even pyrrhic 
 or iamb, instead of accentual spondee or dactyl. The 
 principle of caesura 1 (i.e. that the line shall be divided by 
 a pause in the middle of one or more feet) holds good 
 
 1 Here marked by a short bar. 
 
80 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 in the English, as in the classical hexameter. Take the 
 following as specimens : 
 
 Nowhere ejquali'ty | reigns | in | all the | world of cre|ation. 
 Star is not | equal to | star | nor | blossom the | same as j blossom : 
 Herb is not | equal to | herb | any | more than | planet to | planet. 
 There is a | glory of | daisies, | a | glory a|gain of carlnations ; 
 Were the car|nation | wise | in j gay parterre by j greenhouse, 
 Should it de|cline to acjcept | the | nurture the | gardener | gives it, 
 Should it re|fuse to ex|pand | to sun and j genial | summer, 
 Simply bejcause the field-Jdaisy | that | grows in the | grass be|side it 
 Cannot, for j some cause or | other, | dejvelope and | be a car|nation? 
 Would not the J daisy it|self | petition its | scrupulous [ neighbour? 
 Up, grow, | bloom and for|get me, | be | beautiful | even to | proud- 
 
 ness 
 E'en for the | sake of my|self | and | other poor | daisies | like me. 
 
 ClouG-h, The Bothie. 
 
 Tibur is | beautiful | too, | and the | orchard | slopes and the | Anio, 
 Falling, | falling, | yet | to the | ancient | lyrical | cadence; 
 Tibur and | Anio's | tide, | and | cool from Lujcretilis | ever, 
 With the Dijgentian | stream | and | with the Banldusian | fountain, 
 Folded in | Sabine rejcesses | the | valley and | villa of | Horace. 
 
 Amours de Voyage. 
 
 The classical pentameter consists of two sections, 
 each containing two dactyls followed by a long syllable. 
 In the first section spondees, and in English, trochees 
 are allowed as substitutes for dactyls. It is regularly 
 used as the 2nd line of the Elegiac couplet, in which the 
 1 st line is a hexameter, as 
 
 In the hexjameter | rises the | fountain's j silvery | column, 
 In the pen|tameter | aye |] falling in | melody j back. 
 
 The truncated hexameter is used by Lord Bowen in 
 his translation of Virgil, 
 
 Death's dark | gates stand | open, a|like through the | day and 
 
 the I night A ; 
 But to re|trace thy | steps and e|merge to the | sunlight a|bove A , 
 This is the | toil and the | trouble. 
 
ADAPTATIONS OF CLASSICAL METRES 8 1 
 
 Browning makes excellent use of the truncated 
 hexameter in his very irregular elegiac poem Abt Vogler, 
 beginning 
 Would that the | structure | brave, the I manifold | music I | build A , 
 
 Bidding my | organ o|bey, || calling his | keys to their | work, 
 Claiming each | slave of the | sound, at a | touch, as when | Solo- 
 mon j willed A 
 Armies of | angels which | soar, || legions of | demons which | lurk. 
 
 In later verses the long syllable which closes the 
 first section of the pentameter is often changed to a 
 trochee, while the second dactyl of the second section 
 also becomes a trochee : and even the dactylic rhythm 
 itself is not unfrequently changed to anapaestic, thus 
 
 Therefore to | whom turn | I but to | Thee, the injeffable J 
 Name A ? 
 Builder and ] maker | Thou qf\\ houses not j made with hands ! 
 What, have | fear of | change from | Thee who art | ever 
 the | same A ? 
 Doubt that thy j power can \fill the || heart, that thy j power 
 exjpands ? 
 anap. There shall nevjer be one | lost good. | What was | shall 
 
 O O30OIII 1 O 
 
 live | as before, 
 
 2 O O I 
 
 The e|vil is null, | is nought, || is sijlence implyjing a sound. 
 
 OIOOI O I 010 0100 I 
 
 A What | was good | shall be good, | with, for ejvil, so much | 
 
 I. 12 OOI O OIOOI 
 
 good more; 
 i i 
 
 On the earth | the brojken arcs, || in the heaven \ a perjfect 
 
 00 2 0201 OO 2 O 2 11 
 
 round. 
 
 i 
 
 Tennyson has been very successful in imitating other 
 classical metres such as the hendecasyllabics, of which the 
 scheme is 
 
 -^r — ^v> — v^ — \s — — , 
 
82 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 or 5-foot trochaic with dactylic substitution in 2nd foot. 
 O you I chorus of | indoljent re|viewers, 
 Irrejsponsible | indoljent re|viewers, 
 Look, I | come to the | test, a | tiny | poem 
 All comjposed in a | metre | of Ca|tullus. 
 
 Only in the following line the amphibrach '-tant 
 maga-' seems to me a very unsatisfactory substitute for 
 the dactyl; but perhaps the heading 'In Quantity' at the 
 top of the page is intended to warn us that accents will 
 be disregarded. 
 
 O blaltant magajzines, reigard me | rather... 
 As some | rare little | rose, a | piece of | inmost 
 Horticultural | art, or | half co|quette-like 
 Maiden,. | not to be j greeted | unbe|nignly. 
 
 The Alcaic four-line stanza, of which the scheme is 
 
 - - ^ I -^vy I - ^ ^ I twice repeated, and then 
 
 — \j \y — wv j — \y \ — — J 
 
 is represented by 
 
 O migh|ty mouthed | infventor of | harmonies, 
 O skilled | to sing | of | time or ejternity, 
 God-giftjed or|gan-voice | of Eng(land, 
 Milton, a | name to re|sound for | ages 
 
 where the 1st and 2nd lines might be described, in the 
 terminology we have employed, as consisting of two 
 iambs separated by a monosyllable from two dactyls ; of 
 which the notation would be iamb 2 +, dact. 2. 
 
 The 3rd line might be described as iamb 4 +, and the 
 last line as dact. 2, troch. 2. These two lines closely 
 resemble the latter half of the stanza used in the poem 
 addressed to F. D. Maurice, where the first two lines are 
 four- foot iambic, 
 
 For groves | of pine | on eijther hand 
 
 To break | the blasts | of winjter stand; 
 And fur|ther on | the hoa|ry Chan(nel 
 
 Tumbles a | billow on | chalk and | sand A 
 
ADAPTATIONS OF CLASSICAL METRES 83 
 
 the only difference being that the final trochee is 
 truncated. 
 
 There is a burlesque parody of the Horatian Sapphic 
 metre in the Afiti-Jacobin, 
 
 Needy knife-grinder! whither are you going? 
 Rough is the road, your wheel is out of order, 
 Bleak blows the blast, your hat has got a hole in't, 
 So have your breeches. 
 
 Tell me, knife-grinder, how you came to grind knives? 
 Did some rich man tyrannically use you? 
 Was it the Squire or Parson of the Parish ? 
 Or the Attorney? 
 
 This metre has on the ear the effect of a five-foot 
 
 trochaic, in which a dactyl is substituted for the first 
 
 trochee. The fourth line is composed of a dactyl and 
 
 trochee. The scheme of the Horatian Sapphic line is 
 
 Jam satis terris nivis atque dirae, 
 that is, trochee, spondee, dactyl, trochee, trochee. 
 
 Swinburne 1 has been daring enough to try an imitation 
 of the greater Asclepiad used by Horace (Carm. 1. 18): 
 
 Nullam I Vare sacra | vite prius | severis | arborem 
 of which the scheme is — , — ^ ^ -, - ^ ^ -, - ^ v^, - ^ v^, 
 that is, spondee, choriambus 2 , choriambus, dactyl, dactyl. 
 But Swinburne divides his last two feet differently, making 
 a third choriambus followed by an iamb. 
 Love, what | ailed thee to leave | life that was made | lovely we 
 
 x I I OOI ZOO I IOO 
 
 thought I with love? 
 
 I O I 
 
 What sweet | visions of sleep | lured thee away | down from the 
 
 X I I O O I I OOI I 00 
 
 light I above? 
 
 I ox 
 
 1 Quoted in Gummere's Handbook of Poetics, p. 232. 
 
 2 This word denotes trochee followed by iamb. 
 
 6—2 
 
84 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 Exercise on Chapter VIII. 
 
 Wearily stretches the sand to the surge and the surge to the 
 cloudland ; 
 Wearily onward I ride, watching the water alone. 
 Not, as of old, like Homeric Achilles, Kvdec yaluv, 
 
 Joyous knight-errant of God, thirsting for labour and strife. 
 ******** 
 
 Fruit-bearing autumn is gone, let the sad quiet winter hang o'er 
 me. 
 What were the spring to a soul laden with sorrow and shame? 
 Blossoms would fret me with beauty : my heart has no time to 
 bepraise them. 
 Grey rock, bough, surge, cloud, waken no yearning within. 
 Sing not, thou sky-lark above ! even angels pass hushed by the 
 weeper. 
 Scream on, ye sea-fowl ! my heart echoes your desolate cry. 
 
 Kingsley. 
 
 Hail, holy fountain, limpid and eternal, 
 Green as the emerald, infinite, abundant, 
 Sweet, unpolluted, cold and clear as crystal, 
 Father Nemausus. 
 
 Baring Gould. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 WHAT DETERMINES THE POET'S CHOICE OF 
 METRE? AESTHETIC QUALITY OF PARTICULAR 
 METRES. 
 
 We have seen that the metre and general character 
 of the verse are determined by the nature and number 
 of the feet of which it is made up, and that the nature of 
 the foot depends upon the number of syllables and the 
 position of the stress. Further we have seen that the 
 normal line may be varied by the interposition of stops 
 and pauses, by the substitution of one sort of foot for 
 another, by the omission or addition of unaccented 
 syllables at the beginning or end of the line, and in 
 other ways. I proceed now to consider what is the 
 reason for these variations. Are they merely accidental, 
 the result of carelessness or want of skill on the part of 
 the poet? This is probably the case to some extent 
 with regard to the tumbling metre or ballad metre, as in 1 
 
 The Perjcy out | of Northumberland, 
 
 And a vow | to God | made he, 
 That he | would hunt | in the mountains 
 
 Of Cheviot within | days three 
 
 1 As there is no uniformity in the printed spelling I have used 
 the modern form, except where the metre required the old form. 
 
$6 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 In the maujgre of | doughte | Douglas 
 
 And all | that ever with \ him be. 
 The fatt|est harts | in all | Cheviot 
 
 He said | he would kill | and carr|j them away: 
 By my faith, | said the doughte Dougjlas again, 
 
 I will let J that hunt ling if | that I may. 
 
 ******** 
 
 I wot | you bin | great lordies twa, 
 
 I am | a poor squire | of land ; 
 / will never \ see my cap|tain fight | on a field, 
 
 And stand | myselfe | and look on, 
 But while | I may | my weapjon wield, 
 
 / will not fail | both heart | and hand. 
 
 It will be noticed that the accentuation is uncertain 
 here. In one line it is on the last syllable, in another 
 on the first of 'doughte' and 'Douglas'; and the 
 italicized feet contain more than the proper number of 
 syllables. In the 3rd and 6th lines of the last stanza 
 these may be reduced by elision 'I'll ne'er,' 'I'll not 
 fail ' ; in the others we must either suppose that an 
 amphibrach is used, or have recourse to slurring. The 
 lines are also irregular in length, varying between three 
 and four feet. 
 
 But though in ballad poetry the stress is often simply 
 arbitrary, it is impossible to suppose that there is any- 
 thing capricious or accidental in the w r ork of skilled 
 artists such as Milton or Tennyson. We may like or 
 dislike the effect produced, but there can be no doubt 
 that the poet had a reason for what he was doing. Even 
 in less conscious poets, such as Shelley, though the 
 means may not have been deliberately selected, yet there 
 was a more or less conscious striving after the result 1 . 
 
 1 Compare Coleridge's Preface to Christabel: 'The occasional 
 variation in number of syllables is not introduced wantonly, or for 
 the mere ends of convenience, but in correspondence with some 
 transition in the nature of the imagery or passion.' 
 
QUALITY OF PARTICULAR METRES 87 
 
 In previous chapters I have endeavoured to give an 
 objective statement of the facts of Modern English 
 metre : here it will be my aim to give reasons for the 
 facts, to point out, that is, the relation between the 
 feeling of the poet and the rhythmical means employed 
 by him to communicate that feeling to his hearers or 
 readers. To express the same idea metaphorically : so 
 far, I have been busy with the outward form or body of 
 metre ; I seek now to penetrate to its spirit. 
 
 Can we give any reason, then, why a poet should select 
 one metre rather than another for the poem which is still , 
 seething in his brain ? The Greeks, we know, chose the ( 
 hexameter or six-foot dactylic for heroic narrative, lyrical ; 
 verse for the expression of pure emotion, and the six-foot 1 
 iambic for dramatic representation. In English, five-foot 
 iambic is the regular vehicle both for narrative, dramatic, 
 and didactic poetry, the other metres (speaking generally 
 and loosely) being reserved for the expression of emotion. 
 Can we find any principle which determines the choice 
 of the particular metre employed by the poet ? 
 
 An American metrist draws the following dis- 
 tinction between disyllabic and trisyllabic metre : the 
 former, he says, 'is the medium of the poetry of re- 
 flection,' the latter ' of the poetry of motion V And 
 again (p. 63), 'There is, in the accelerated vibration of 
 the triple beat, a rush, a vigour, a sense of onward move- 
 ment, very distinct and dynamic'; and (p. 76), 'Poets 
 have instinctively selected three-beat rhythm as the 
 vehicle of their most fervid thought. Wherever rapid 
 or passionate action is to be expressed, it will be found 
 a most effective medium. The Good News is carried 
 from Ghent to Aix upon it ; Pheidippides runs in it ; the 
 1 Dabney, Musical Basis of Vase, p. 66. 
 
88 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 Light Brigade charges in it ; the Sea Fairies dance to it ; 
 the pace of Arethusa's melodious flight is tuned to it; 
 and upon its numbers a thousand imperishable love 
 lyrics breathe out their impassioned music' And once 
 again (p. 64), 'Should we feel the breathless impact of 
 this poem (the Light Brigade) if it were cast in heroic 
 blank verse, or in the (four-foot iambic) metre of the 
 White Doe of Rylstonet It is in the rhythmic rush, 
 quite as much as in the words, that the impression is 
 conveyed to the imagination.' 
 
 I think there is much truth in this. It is quite borne 
 out by Clough's splendid hexameters, 
 
 Breathed a brief | moment and | hurried ex|ultingly | on with 
 
 his I rider, 
 Far over | hillock and | runnel and | bramble, ajway in the | 
 
 champaign, 
 Snorting de| fiance and | force, the | white foam | flecking his | 
 
 flanks, the , 
 Rein hanging | loose to his | neck and | head pro|jecting bejfore 
 
 him. 
 1 Oh, if they | knew and considered, unjhappy ones, | Oh, could 
 
 they I see, could 
 But for a | moment dis[cern how the | blood of true | gallantry | 
 
 kindles, 
 How the old j knightly religion, the | chivalry | semi-quixjotic 
 Stirs in the | veins of a | man at | seeing some | delicate | woman 
 Serving him, j toiling for | him and the | world ' 
 
 and it agrees with Dr Abbott's remark that 'the ana- 
 paestic measure is used to express wild uproar' in 
 Dryden's somewhat primitive lines : 
 
 The prin|ces applaud | with a fujrious joy 
 
 And the king | seized a flam) beau with zeal | to destroy. 
 
 But we cannot, I think, deny that trisyllabic metre 
 (especially with the variations admitted by modern 
 poets) is capable of expressing the tenderest pathos, 
 
QUALITY OF PARTICULAR METRES 89 
 
 as well as fervid thought or passionate action, when we 
 
 read 
 
 Take her up tenderly, 
 Lift her with care, 
 Fashioned so slenderly, 
 Young and so fair 
 or 
 
 A Break, | A break, | A break 
 At the foot I of thy crags, | O sea ; 
 But the tender grace | of a day | that is dead 
 Will nevjer come back | to me. 
 
 Again, Dr Abbott speaks of trisyllabic lines preceding or 
 following the trochaic metre as suggestive of merriment, 
 as in 
 
 There I | couch when | owls do | cry A ; 
 
 On the I bat's back | I do | fly A 
 
 After J summer | merrily A . 
 
 Merrily | merrily | shall I live [ now A 
 
 Under the | blossom that | hangs on the | bough A 
 
 where the movement of the last two lines seems to 
 quicken to a dance. 
 
 In the other passage which he quotes, taken from the 
 Monastery \ the commencing trisyllabic 1 lines seem to me 
 to express only a forced and ironic merriment, passing 
 through the ominous movement of the third line, into 
 the awful stillness of the fourth, and the ghastly laughter 
 of the closing anapaests. 
 
 A Merrily swim | we, the moon | shines bright, 
 A Downward we drift | through shad;ow and light, 
 A Un,der yon rock | the ed|dies sleep, 
 A Calm I and si,lent, dark | and deep. 
 The Kel py has risen | from the fathomless pool, 
 He has lighted his can ; dle of death | and of dool ; 
 A Look, I father, look, | and you'll laugh | to see, 
 How he gapes j and glares | with his eyes | on thee. 
 
 1 I should prefer to call them anapaestic, as they end with 
 a stress, and the closing lines are undoubtedly such. 
 
90 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 Byron's choice of trisyllabic metre for his Sennacherib is 
 easily explained by the rapidity and suddenness of the 
 incidents described : 
 
 The Assyrian came down | like the wolf | on the fold, 
 and then 
 
 For the an|gel of death | spread his wings | on the blast, 
 And breathed | in the face j of the foe | as he passed, 
 And the eyes | of the sleep|ers waxed deadjly and chill, 
 And their hearts | but once heaved, j and for ev|er grew still. 
 
 There is a sweet gentle pathos in some of Cowper's 
 
 anapaests, as in : 
 
 The pop|lars are felled; | farewell | to the shade 
 And the whis|pering sound | of the cool | colonnade ; 
 The winds | play no long|er and sing | in the leaves, 
 Nor Ouse | on his bos|om their imjage receives. 
 
 But I cannot say that I feel this in regard to the verses 
 on Alexander Selkirk : 
 
 I am monarch of all I survey ; 
 
 My right there is none to dispute ; 
 
 From the centre all round to the sea 
 
 I am lord of the fowl and the brute. 
 
 It may be my own fault, but I do not find this either 
 musical or pathetic 1 . 
 
 1 The lines which I like best in the poem 
 
 But the sound of the church-going bell 
 
 These valleys and rocks never heard, 
 
 Never sighed at the sound of a knell, 
 
 Nor smiled when a sabbath appeared 
 are omitted in the Golden Treasury, probably from Wordsworth's 
 prosaic objection to the propriety of the phrase 'church-going bell,' 
 as though ' church-going ' were a participle, implying that the bells 
 themselves go/<? church or in church, instead of being a substantive, 
 analogous to 'dinner-bell,' giving in one word the picture of the 
 people flocking to church at the sound of the bell. To my mind 
 this is a beautiful and natural expression of the contrast between 
 an ancient land, rich in historic and religious associations, and the 
 raw savagery of an untrodden soil. 
 
QUALITY OF PARTICULAR METRES 9 1 
 
 It cannot be simply because the line is too short, 
 for parts of Maud and M. Arnold's Rugby Chapel are 
 in the same metre, and yet are felt to be a fitting em- 
 bodiment of most genuine feeling. Let us see what 
 makes the difference between them. Take 11. iv. 6 of 
 Maud : 
 
 'Tis a morning pure and sweet, 
 
 And a dewy splendour falls 
 
 On the little flower that clings 
 
 To the turrets and the walls. 
 
 It will be noted that these lines are characterised by 
 a flowing melody very unlike the rackety effect of 
 Cowper's lines, the hurry of the initial anapaests passing 
 into the quiet iambs of the other feet. Then take 
 Arnold's lines. With what skill the key-note is given in 
 the slow movement of the opening words : 
 
 A Cold|ly, sad|ly descends 
 The autumn evening 
 
 and how varied is the rhythmical expression of sorrow in 
 the following : 
 
 The lights | come out | in the street, 
 In the school-|room winjdows; but cold, 
 
 A Soljemn, unlightjed, austere, 
 Through the gathering dark ness arise 
 The chapjel walls, | in whose bound 
 
 A Thou, I my fa ther, art laid. 
 
 The only excuse that occurs to me for the hard, unfeeling 
 metre with which Cowper commences his poem, is that 
 these lines are intended to be ironical ; but, if so, I think 
 the contrast between irony and real feeling should have 
 been more clearly brought out. 
 
 There is a noble pathos and strength in Wolfe's 
 Burial of Sir John Moore. 
 
 What are we to say of Shelley's Sensitive Riant? 
 
92 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 None can help feeling the delicate beauty of such 
 
 lines as : 
 
 And the hy|acinth, pur|ple and white | and blue, 
 Which flung | from its bells | a sweet | peal anew 
 Of mu|sic, so dedicate, soft | and intense, 
 It was felt | as an ojdour within | the sense 
 
 but in what way is the metre especially appropriate to 
 the subject ? There is nothing of vehemence or passion, 
 or pathos, or merriment : it seems rather a rippling fairy 
 music belonging to the world of Ariel and Titania, and 
 audible only to the poet's ear. 
 
 We have seen then something of the special uses to 
 which trisyllabic metre has been applied by the poets, 
 and of the reasons which may have induced them to 
 choose this metre for particular subjects. Can we arrive 
 at any similar conclusion with regard to the iambic and 
 trochaic metres ? 
 
 Instead of the terms iambic and trochaic, Mr Dabney 
 prefers to make use of the terms Strict Disyllabic and 
 Disyllabic with Direct Attack, and in like manner ana- 
 paestic becomes Strict Trisyllabic, and dactylic Tri- 
 syllabic with Direct Attack. He maintains (p. 47) that 
 'the direct attack gives a splendid momentum to the 
 rhythmic movement, much like the first launching spring 
 of a swimmer.' I cannot say that this judgment as to 
 the difference between the trochee and dactyl on the one 
 hand, and the iamb and anapaest on the other, and the 
 superiority of the former to the latter, commends itself to 
 me, as did the previous judgment in reference to tri- 
 syllabic metre generally 1 . I cannot see that the trochaic 
 
 1 Mr Dabney himself, speaking of Browning's Good News (p. 89), 
 says 'this poem is in strict verse, advisedly so.... The anacrusis is 
 required for the cumulative effect : and so vivid is the effect that the 
 reader himself becomes the actor, &c.' 
 
QUALITY OF PARTICULAR METRES 93 
 
 rhythm has any special advantage over the iambic rhythm 
 in the following lines : 
 
 Troch. 3. Now the | day is | over. 
 Iamb. 3. The orjacles | are dumb. 
 Troch. 4. Deeply | mourned the | lord of | Burleigh. 
 lamb. 4. Of old | sat free|dom on j the heights. 
 Troch. 5. »He shall | find the | stubborn | thistle j bursting. 
 Iamb. 5. Once more j uprose | the mysjtic mounjtain range. 
 Troch. 6 — All ailong the | valley, | stream that | flashest | white A . 
 Iamb. 6. The genjtle warbjling wind | low anjswereth | to all. 
 Troch. 7 — Like a | tale of | little | meaning, | though the | words 
 
 be I strong A . 
 Troch. 7. Thunder | heaves and | howls ajbout them, | lightning | 
 
 leaps and | flashes. 
 Iamb. 7. But ere | stern conjflict mixed | both strengths, | fair 
 
 Par|is stepped | before. 
 
 Indeed it is difficult to make any assertion about lines 
 which differ so much in character as troch. 4, troch. 5, 
 and troch. 7. If I were required to lay down any broad 
 distinction between the effects of the iambic and trochaic 
 rhythms, I should rather be inclined to say that the 
 former was a severe uphill movement, the latter (as the 
 Greek name implies) an easy, tripping, down-hill move- 
 ment ; that the former was masculine, rational, formal, 
 dignified, while the latter was feminine, emotional, playful j 
 but such distinctions are only applicable within a very 
 limited range, and on the whole I think it wiser not to 
 generalise beforehand, but to start by endeavouring to 
 ascertain the means employed to produce particular 
 effects in particular poems ; and I will deal first with 
 those irregularities in the heroic metre of which we have 
 treated in the earlier chapters, beginning with the use of 
 the feminine (or double) ending. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 AESTHETIC USE OF METRICAL VARIATION ARIS- 
 ING FROM FEMININE RHYTHM, ENJAMBEMENT, 
 POSITION OF PAUSES, INTERCHANGE OF FEET, 
 SPECIAL QUALITY OF VOWELS AND CONSO- 
 NANTS, ALLITERATION AND ONOMATOPOEIA. 
 
 Ur Abbott has pointed out (New Shakesp. Soc. Trans. 
 for 1874, p. 76) that though we may trace on the whole a 
 steady increase in the use of the feminine ending, as we 
 pass from the earlier to the later plays of Shakespeare, yet 
 such double endings are very unequally distributed through 
 the scenes of the same play. Thus he contrasts Rich. II. 
 Act 1. Sc. 1, which he calls 'a spirited scene with a sort 
 of trumpet sound about it,' and in which there is free 
 use of the extra syllable (24 in 146 lines), with Act v. 
 Sc. 5, containing Richard's soliloquy in prison, where the 
 extra syllable occurs only once in 119 lines. And he 
 thus states the occasions on which it is used, 'in 
 moments of passion and excitement, in questions, in 
 quarrel, seldom in quiet dialogue and narrative, and 
 seldom in any serious or pathetic passage.' The phrase 
 'trumpet sound' does not commend itself to me as 
 applicable here, but otherwise Dr Abbott's remarks agree 
 fairly with my observations in Hamlet, except that I 
 
AESTHETIC USE OF METRICAL VARIATION 95 
 
 should add ' especially in the light and airy conversation 
 of polite society.' Thus to take the extremes of the use 
 of the feminine ending in Hamlet, we find it most freely 
 used in 
 
 iv. 5. 76 — 96. The King to the Queen ; average 
 almost one in 2. 
 
 v. 2. 237 — 276. Dialogue between Hamlet and 
 Laertes; average the same. 
 
 1. 3. 91 — 135. Polonius to Ophelia (omitting 
 Ophelia's replies) ; average one out of 2 \. 
 
 The average is one in less than 3 in the King's 
 speech to the Ambassadors and Laertes (1. 2. 1 — 56), 
 and in the King's speech to Hamlet (1. 2. 87* — 117). 
 
 If we examine these scenes, we find that in the con- 
 versation between Hamlet and Laertes there is on both 
 sides a straining after excessive courtesy, partly because 
 they are about to enter into a contest of personal prowess, 
 but even more from the wish, on Hamlet's part, to atone 
 for previous rudeness, and, on the part of Laertes, to 
 hide his murderous intention. By the use of the feminine 
 ending the poet endeavours to reproduce the easy tone of 
 ordinary life ; and this no doubt explains its indiscriminate 
 use in Fletcher, the poet of society 1 . There is felt to 
 be something formal, stilted, high-flown, poetic, in the 
 regular iambic metre. Three of the other scenes contain 
 speeches by the King. Now the King, we know from 
 Hamlet, is a ' smiling villain ' ; he affects affability and 
 ease ; there is nothing strong or straightforward in his 
 character, but he carries his point by cunning subtilty, 
 1 with witchcraft of his wit.' The same explanation will 
 
 l - It is now generally agreed, as I have mentioned before, that 
 the scenes in Henry VIII. , in which the feminine ending is con- 
 spicuous, are by Fletcher. 
 
g6 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 account for the prevalence of feminine rhythm in the 
 speech of the worldly-wise Polonius. 
 Consider now the opposite extreme. 
 
 i. i. 112 — 125. Horatio's speech, double endings, 
 one in 14. 
 
 in. 4. 31 — 87. Hamlet's speech to his mother, 
 one in 9. 
 
 in. 4% 140 — 213. Hamlet's speech to his mother, 
 one in 6. 
 
 iv. 4. 32 — 66. Hamlet's soliloquy, one in 7. 
 
 in. 1. 56 — 88. „ „ one in 7. 
 
 I. 5. 10 — 91. Ghost's speech, one in less than 7. 
 
 II. 2. 473 — 540. Old play (The rugged Pyrrhus), 
 one in 6J. 
 
 in. 3. 73 — 96. Hamlet (seeing his uncle praying), 
 one in 5 J. 
 
 in. 3. 36 — 71. King's soliloquy, one in 5. 
 
 Horatio's speech, commencing 1 
 
 A mote I it is | to /roub|le the j wind's eye. 
 
 001 1 
 
 In the I most high | and palj/«y state | of Rome, 
 00 11 
 
 A l\t\tle ere | the might\iest Ju\lius {ell, 
 
 00 100 1 
 
 The graves | stood tex\\axitless , and | the sheet\ed dead 
 
 1 200 1 
 
 Did jqueak | and gib|ber in I the Ro|wan streets 
 
 o o 
 
 is a piece of fine imaginative poetry, standing in strong 
 contrast with the preceding rapid business-like statement 
 about the claim of Fortinbras. In place of the rough, 
 broken rhythm of the former speech we have here some 
 four or five of the most musically varied lines in Shake- 
 speare, marked by slow movement, long vowels, and 
 
 1 Alliteration is marked by italics. 
 
AESTHETIC USE OF METRICAL VARIATION 97 
 
 A 
 
 alliteration. It is only as Horatio descends to earth [<* to 
 again, that we have the double ending in 1. 124 L * 1 
 
 Have heav;en and earth | togethjer dem|onstrat(ed. ™ O 2 
 
 In Hamlet's speech to his mother he appears as a stern 
 preacher, obeying the command received from his 
 murdered father. Plainly there is no place here for ease 
 and politeness. The same may be said of the Ghost's 
 speech, only that it has an added solemnity. The old 
 play is necessarily regular and formal. Soliloquies, if 
 quietly meditative, or the outpouring of a pleasing 
 emotion, will naturally take the regular poetic form : if 
 agitated or vehemently argumentative, they will be irre- 
 gular, marked by the use of sudden pauses, feminine 
 ending and trisyllabic feet, as we see in 1. 2. 129 — 160 
 ' O that this too too solid flesh would melt,' &c. This is 
 remarkably shown in the speech beginning 'To be or 
 not to be' (in. 1. 56), where we find five double endings 
 in the first 8 lines, these being perplexed and argumenta- 
 tive ; but none in the next 20 lines, as these are merely the 
 pathetic expression of a single current of thought : 
 
 Who I would farjdels bear, 
 To grunt | and sweat | under | a weajry life, 
 
 But that I the dread | of something af iter death, 
 
 I o 
 
 The un [discovered counjtry from | whose bourn 
 
 o o 
 
 No traveller | returns, | puzzles | the will, 
 
 I I O O 3 
 
 And makes | us rajther bear | those ills | we have 
 
 1 1 
 
 Than fly | to othjers that | we know | not of? 
 
 o o 
 
 Then in 1. 83 follow reflections of a more prosaic turn, 
 and we again have two double endings. It may be 
 noticed that in the soliloquies m. 3. 36 — 96, six of the 
 
 m. 7 
 
98 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 twelve double endings consist of the word heaven or 
 prayers, which are hardly to be distinguished from mono- 
 syllables. One other instance may be quoted to illustrate 
 Shakespeare's use of the feminine ending. In i. i. 165 
 Horatio says 
 
 So have | I heard, | and do | in part | believe J it. 
 But, look, I the morn, | in rusjset manjtle clad, 
 Walks o'er | the dew | of yon j high eastward hill. 
 
 The first line is conversational, the two others imaginative 
 without passion, only with a joyful welcome of the calm, 
 bright, healthy dawn after the troubled, spectral night ; 
 and we have a corresponding change in the rhythm. 
 
 Another peculiarity of Shakespeare's later plays, which 
 has much the same effect as the feminine ending, is what 
 is called enjambement (for which Mr Austin Dobson, 
 followed by Mr Gosse, suggests 'overflow' as an 
 English equivalent), where the omission of the usual 
 final pause allows the meaning of one line to run on into 
 another. Such a line is called an 'unstopt line.' The 
 proportion of unstopt to end-stopt lines is said to be about 
 1 to 18 in Love's Labour's Lost, which belongs to Shake- 
 speare's earliest period, and 1 to 2 in the late Winter's 
 Tale. Compare Act in. Sc. 2 of the latter : 
 
 Pry thee, bring me 
 -To the dead bodies of my queen and son : 
 One grave shall be for both; upon them shall 1 
 -The causes of their death appear, unto 1 
 -Our shame perpetual. 
 
 The license is carried even further by Shelley, who some- 
 times makes no pause between the end of one stanza and 
 
 1 These weak endings, in which term I include what are some- 
 times called 'light endings,' add to the difficulty of making any pause 
 at the end of a line. 
 
AESTHETIC USE OF METRICAL VARIATION 99 
 
 the beginning of another. This may have a fine effect, 
 as in the end of the 18th stanza of the Ode to Liberty : 
 The solemn harmony 
 
 {St. xix.) 
 Paused, and the spirit of that mighty singing 
 To its abyss was suddenly withdrawn. 
 
 At other times it is probably meant to be comic, or at 
 least to give an exaggerated air of freedom, as in the 40th 
 stanza of the Hymn to Mercury : 
 
 Phoebus the lovely mountain goddess knew, 
 Nor less her subtle, swindling baby, who 
 
 {St. XLl.) 
 Lay swathed in his sly wiles. Round every crook 
 
 Of the ample cavern, for his kine Apollo 
 Looked sharp ; and when he saw them not, he took 
 
 -'The glittering key, and opened three great hollow 
 
 "-Recesses in the rock. 
 
 This license is carried to still greater lengths by 
 Milton in the lines : 
 
 Ophion with Eurynome, the wide- 
 encroaching Eve perhaps, had first the rule 
 Of high Olympus P. L. x. 580. 
 
 and by Ben Jonson in Sejanus, II. 2 : 
 
 Pray Augusta then 
 That for her own, great Caesar's, and the pub- 
 lic safety, she be pleased to urge these dangers. 
 
 It is used with comic effect in the Anti-Jacobin : 
 
 Sun, moon, and thou, vain world, adieu, 
 That kings and priests are plotting in : 
 Here doomed to starve on water gru- 
 el, never shall I see the U- 
 niversity of Gottingen, 
 niversity of Gottingen. Canning. 
 
 The chief use, however, of enjambement is undoubtedly 
 
 7—2 
 
IOO MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 to render possible the elaboration of such a full harmony 
 
 as the following ' : 
 
 Anon they move 
 In perfect pha\lanx to | the jOojrian woo^ 
 
 01 O 1000 I 00 I 
 
 Of flutes | and soft | recorders ; .such | as raised 
 
 01 O IOIO I O I 
 
 To ^eigh/ | of no\blest tem\pex /je|;-oes old 
 
 O I OIOIOIO I 
 
 Arming j to batt\le ; and | instead | of rage 
 
 20 0200 OI O I 
 
 Delib\eraie va/jour breathed, \f\xm and | unmoved 
 
 0100 10 I 20 12 
 
 With dread \ of death j to flight | or foul \ retreat ; 
 
 O I 01 01 OIOI 
 
 Nor want\ing power | to ;/n/|iga/e | and 'suage 
 
 IIO I 0201 O I 
 
 IVith solemn fouch|es /roubj/ed Noughts, | and chaj-e 
 
 020IOIOI O I 
 
 Ang«/sh | a,nd doubt | and /ear j and .rorrjow and pain 
 
 20 O I O " I O I O I 
 
 From mor\ta\ or | immox\ta\ minds. P. L. I. 549 f. 
 
 O IOO 210 I 
 
 But the use of the unstopped line, or, speaking more 
 generally, the position of the pauses, goes only a little 
 way to explain how the marvellous effect of these lines is 
 produced 2 . We must take into account other factors, of 
 
 1 Long vowels are here marked by thick type, alliteration by italics. 
 
 2 The variety of pauses is exhibited in the following scheme, 
 where a stands for an accented, x for an unaccented syllable, and 
 each pause is represented by a comma. 
 
 ('In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood,' &c.) 
 xax,ax,xxaxx,a 
 xa,xa,xax,a,xa 
 xa,xax,ax,ax,a, 
 ax,xax,a,xaxa, 
 xaxx,ax,a,a f xxa 
 x a t x , x a , x a , x a t 
 a,ax,a,xaxa,xa 
 xax,ax,ax,a,xa 
 ax,xa,xa,xax,xa 
 x a x , x a a x , a 
 
AESTHETIC USE OF METRICAL VARIATION IOI 
 
 which we have not yet spoken, such as the quality of 
 vowels and of consonants, the recurrence of sound in 
 alliteration, assonance, rhyme or refrain, and generally 
 the imitation of the sense by the sound, over and above 
 the modes of variation enumerated in the previous 
 chapters, if we would learn to estimate the technical 
 skill of the poet. 
 
 Of rhyme and refrain I shall speak in a following 
 chapter. Alliteration 1 is the technical term for the re- 
 currence of a consonant or vowel-sound (the latter is 
 also sometimes termed 'assonance'). As a rule, recur- 
 rence of sound is, within certain limits, pleasing to the 
 ear ; and where particular sounds affect us in a particular 
 way, the multiplication of such sounds intensifies the 
 effect. Thus the consonants are loosely divided into 
 sharp and flat mutes, viz. dentals (/, a 7 ), labials (/, l>), 
 gutturals (£, hard c and g) t liquids (/, #*, n, r), and the 
 spirants, semi-vowels and sibilants (/, //i, y, 7t>, s, sk, z, 
 z/i, soft g), all affecting us in different ways. The effort 
 to produce a particular sound is greater the earlier the 
 check is applied to the breath, greatest at the throat 
 (gutturals), becoming gradually easier with the dentals, 
 and the labials, and easiest of all with liquids and 
 spirants. Hence the liquids, with the exception of a 
 strongly rolled r, the spirants, and the semi-vowels have 
 the smoothest effect, and the gutturals the harshest, 
 labials and dentals being intermediate. Sharp mutes are 
 clearer and shorter than the flat. Then there is the 
 rough breathing (//) which needs more of an effort than 
 the simple vowel. There are also combinations of con- 
 sonants mostly produced by the addition of liquids, or 
 the prefixing of s to other consonants. Of vowels ah is 
 1 See for a fuller account Schipper, Engl. Metrik, II. pp. 69 foil. 
 
102 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 the broadest and strongest, ee the thinnest : the most 
 important difference among vowels for metrical purposes 
 is caused by their greater or less prolongation. In 
 general the music of a verse depends on the importance 
 of its vowel and liquid sounds ; its strength on the im- 
 portance of dentals, labials and gutturals. This may be 
 illustrated by the following lines 1 : 
 
 J/yriads of rivu/ets hurrying through the /awn, 
 The moan of doves in immemorial elms, 
 And murmuring of innu///erab/e bees. Princess. 
 
 — Farewell, ha\>oy fields, 
 Where joy for ever dwells. Hail, hoxtoxs, hail, 
 In/erna/ world, and thou, /rq/bundest Hell, 
 Receive thy new possessor. P. L. I. 
 
 — Wildly he 7e;andered on, 
 Z>ay after day, a weary waste of hours. Shelley. 
 
 It must be remembered however that alliteration may be 
 carried to a ridiculous extreme, as in the 'very tragical 
 mirth ' of the Play in Midsummer Night's Dream 
 
 Whereat with <Vade, with blooo\y Wameful Mide, 
 He bravely broached his foiling /Woody breast. 
 
 Alliteration is often employed, as in the lines above 
 
 quoted from the Princess, to give an echo to the sense. 
 
 This is known by the technical name of onomatopoeia, the 
 
 'name-making process,' so called because a sound, or 
 
 thing accompanied by sound, often received a name 
 
 from the attempt to reproduce the sound, as ' cuckoo,' 
 
 'drum,' 'hiss,' 'crash,' 'rattle,' 'roar.' At other times it 
 
 may serve to give point to an antithesis, as in Hamlet's 
 
 A /ittle more than kin, and /ess than kind. 
 
 Looking again at the passage from P. L. quoted 
 
 above, I think we cannot fail to be struck with the 
 
 stately iambic movement, unbroken by the intrusion of 
 
 1 See also below, pp. 107, 108, 115. 
 
AESTHETIC USE OF METRICAL VARIATION IO3 
 
 alien feet, except for special reasons in the cases which 
 I shall shortly notice — a movement which is so suggestive 
 of its subject, the majestic march of the phalanx ' to the 
 Dorian mood,' breathing, 'instead of rage, deliberate 
 valour.' 
 
 I think also we are conscious that this movement 
 rises to a higher potency, as we pass from the thought of 
 music in its effect on the march and the courage of the 
 soldier, to its wider and deeper spiritual power reaching 
 even to immortal minds : 
 
 Nor, wanting power, to mitigate, and 'suage, 
 With solemn touches, troubled thoughts, and chase. 
 Anguish, and doubt, and fear, and sorrow, and pain, 
 From mortal, or immortal, minds 1 . 
 It will be noticed that three of these lines commence 
 with a monosyllable, followed in one case by one, in 
 another by two, in the third by three trochees, which 
 link the feet together and help to give a smooth flowing 
 rhythm to the passage. The stately movement of the 
 whole, and especially the elevated tone of the latter part, 
 are due partly to the preponderance of long vowels 
 (printed in thick type), the effect of which is in- 
 creased by the recurrence of particular long vowels, as 
 the in 'Dorian,' 'noblest,' 'heroes,' 'old,' the a in 
 'phalanx,' 'raised,' 'rage,' "suage,' 'chase,' 'pain,' the 00 
 sound in 'move,' 'flutes,' 'mood,' 'unmoved.' It will be 
 remarked that several of these are found at the end of 
 the line, giving the effect of a final assonance, and, in 
 one case, even of rhyme (rage — y suage). Again, the subtly 
 interwoven alliteration of dentals, liquids and labials (dis- 
 tinguished by italics) contributes greatly both to the unity 
 and the beauty of the passage as a whole. 
 
 1 The pauses, even the smaller pauses, are so important for the 
 rhythmical effect, that I have marked them all. 
 
104 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 In the classification which follows I mark the recur- 
 ring consonants according to their value, by the use of 
 thick type, or italics. 
 
 n. anon, in, Dorian, noblest, instead, uz/moved, nor, 
 pain, armi^, wanting, anguish, and, mi«ds. 
 
 m. wove, wood, tewper, arwing, fir;//, mitigate, 
 solewn, from, mortal, immortal, minds. 
 
 f. per/ect, phalanx, flutes, soft, firm, flight, foul, 
 fear, fiom. 
 
 d. mood, recorders, Dorian, raised, o\d, breathed, 
 unmoved, dread of death, troubled, doubt, and, mind's. 
 
 r. Dorian, raised, heroes, arming, rage, deliberate, 
 breathed, firm, dread, retreat, troubled, sorrow, from, 
 mortal. 
 
 /. f/utes, nob/est, batt/e, deliberate, va/our, f/ight, 
 fou/, solemn, troub/ed, morta/. 
 
 /. perfec/, flu/es, sof/, heigh/, nobles/, temper, battle, 
 delibera/e, ins/ead, to (thrice), fligh/, re/rea/, touches, 
 troubled, doub/, mor/al, wan/ing, mitigate. 
 
 s. flutes, soft, such, noblest, instead, and especially 
 'suage, solemn, thoughts, chase, sorrow. 
 
 p. perfect, tem/er, power, pain. 
 
 h. height, heroes. 
 
 b. noblest, battle, deliberate, breathed. 
 
 w. with, (twice), wanting, power, 'swage, anguish, 
 sorrow (all in the last four lines). 
 
 th. breamed, dea//$, /Noughts. 
 It is remarkable that there is scarcely a single guttural 
 in the whole passage. 
 
 I turn now to the exceptional feet. The first is the 
 final anapaest in 
 
 the Do|rian mood | 
 
 The value of this will be seen, if we substitute ' Doric,' or 
 
AESTHETIC USE OF METRICAL VARIATION 105 
 
 say 'harmonical' for 'Dorian.' We feel that both are 
 out of tune, both lose the fine rolling effect of 'Dorian,' 
 which comes in with all the more force owing to the 
 preceding pyrrhic ' to the.' There is a second anapaest in 
 Deliberate valjour breathed | 
 
 and curiously enough instead of quickening the pace, we 
 feel that the trisyllabic foot intentionally delays it from 
 the care required to keep distinct the pronunciation of the 
 short e before r, just as the ' Dorian mood ' checks the 
 over-hasty tumultuous advance of 'rage.' Beside the 
 anapaests, there are three trochees, two in the first foot, 
 'arming' and 'anguish.' At first sight 'arming to battle' 
 seems to strike a discordant note, too headlong and 
 precipitate, after the slow-moving sonorous verse that 
 precedes, 
 
 To height of noblest temper heroes old, 
 
 but this is merely to enable us to perceive for a moment 
 the fiery energy which underlies their deliberate valour. 
 The other line commencing with a trochee is certainly 
 one of the most effective which even Milton ever wrote : 
 
 — Chase 
 Anguish, and doubt, and fear, and sorrow, and pain. 
 
 The spiritual power of music had been shown in its 
 capacity to soothe and lessen sadness ; but now it rises 
 higher : it not merely lessens, but dispels the whole 
 brood of care. Notice the resemblance and the differ- 
 ence of the closing words 'suage and chase. They are 
 bound together by assonance, that is, by the rhyming 
 vowel ; but the following consonants are antithetic. The 
 lingering 'suage suggests continuous, unfinished action, 
 the rapid chase denotes a complete and instantaneous 
 triumph. 
 
106 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 How the catalogue of various evils is lengthened out 
 by the striking dissimilitude of sound in their names, 
 by the repeated 'and' following the sob in 'anguish,' 
 and then again by the overflowing of ' sorrow,' which is 
 not here to be treated as forming part of a final anapaest, 
 but, if not slurred (as it no doubt was by Milton) should 
 be regarded as making an amphibrach in the fourth foot. 
 There is still one more most effective trochee in the 
 fourth foot of the line : 
 
 Deliberate val|our breathed, | firm and | unmoved. 
 
 OIOOIO I 2 O 12 
 
 The inversion of accent in an iambic line always gives 
 prominence to the foot which suffers inversion, especially 
 if it follows a pause and long strong syllable, as in this 
 case. Thus the word ' firm ' itself seems to stand fixed in 
 the line, like the Dorian soldier or— what Milton no 
 doubt had in his mind — Cromwell's 'ironsides' on the 
 field of battle. 
 
 Take another passage of very different quality, far 
 more broken both by stops and by the intrusion of 
 alien feet, with harsher consonants and less harmonious 
 vowel sounds, but equally marked by alliteration and 
 equally appropriate to its subject : 
 
 He, above the rest 
 In sha/e and ge^/ure proudly eminent, 
 Stood Tike | a tower; his fonn had not yet tost 
 
 2 2 
 
 All her | oWgji/za/ brigh/|«ejj, nor | a//eared 
 
 2 1 O O 
 
 Less thaw | Archawge/ ru|i«ed, a«d | the excess 
 
 10 O O O O 2 
 
 Of g/ojry objured; | as whew | the sun, | new ris{en, 
 
 10 II 
 
 Zooks through | the horizontal misty air 
 i i 
 
 Shorn of | his beams, \ or from | behind the mooti. 
 
AESTHETIC USE OF METRICAL VARIATION 107 
 
 In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds 
 
 On half the nations, and | with fear of change 
 
 o 
 
 Perplexes monarehs. Darkened so, | yet showe 
 
 1 1 
 
 A/»ove them a// j the archawjge/: £ut | his face 
 
 o 01 
 
 Z>eep scars \ of thun\der had | intrenched, and care 
 2 2 0200 
 
 *5at on i his faded cheek ; but under brows 
 
 I o 
 
 Of </au«t/ess cour\age and | fo/zsu/jerate pride 
 00 001 
 
 Waiting | revenge; | cruel | his eye, but cast 
 10 02 20 
 
 Signs of I remorse and paj\y|io«, to | behold 
 10 00 
 
 The fellows of his crime, the followers rath(er 
 
 00 1 
 
 (Far other o//ce beheld in bliss), amdewned 
 
 For ever wow to have their lot in /ai« : 
 
 J/i//ions I of spir\'ifs for | his fault | a/z/erced 
 
 2 O O X I 
 
 Of heaven, | and from j eternal ^J/endours y?ung 
 
 o o 
 
 For his revolt, | yet faith' ful how they j/oo^, 
 
 Their g/ory -withered: as, | when Heavjen's yfre 
 
 Hath scathed the forest oaks or //fountain pines, 
 
 With singed too their stately growth, | Mough bare, 
 
 1 1 
 
 Stands on | the blasted heath. 
 
 1 o 
 
 It will be noticed that the prevailing alliteration is in s, 
 sc, sp, and especially in st, also in the dentals and 
 gutturals, especially in cr, and to a certain extent in /and 
 r\ To avoid complication, I have taken no notice of 
 
 1 We may compare the description of a storm in P. R. iv. 415 : 
 
 —Fell 
 On the \ext wiWerness, whose /allest pines, 
 Though rooted deep as high, and sturdiest oaks 
 Bowed their stiff nechs, loa</en with stormy blasts, 
 Or torn up sheer. 
 
108 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 what may be called ' secondary alliteration,' where there 
 is repetition, not of an identical, but of a similar sound, 
 as where the sharp labial (p) is taken up by the flat labial 
 (b). Both these passages afford examples of onomatopoeia, 
 i.e. of the imitation of the meaning by the sound ; but it 
 is produced rather indirectly, by way of analogy, than 
 directly. Thus a slow harmonious movement suggests 
 a calm and self-controlled temper, while a broken rhythm 
 and harsher sounds are suited to a more passionate and 
 rebellious nature. Milton however supplies examples of 
 direct imitation in such lines as : 
 
 Then in J the ^ey-hole turns 
 
 I o 
 
 The intricate wards, | and every bo\t and box 
 
 I 
 
 Of massy i[ron or sol | id xock with ease 
 
 1 
 
 Unfastens. On \ a sudden open fly, 
 
 I I o o 
 
 With im\petuous \ xtcoW. and jarring sound, 
 
 I O 2 
 
 The inferjnal doors, and on their binges grate 
 
 O 1 
 
 /Tarsh thunder. P. R. II. 876. 
 
 The words and letters in italics are intended to express 
 the turning of the key, the sudden opening of the gates 
 and the creaking of the hinges. Contrast with this the 
 description of the opening of the gates of heaven in 
 P. L. vii. 205 : 
 
 Heaven opened wide 
 Her ever-during gates, harmonious sound, 
 On golden hinges moving. 
 
 In P. L. 11. 714: 
 
 As when two black r/ouds, 
 With heaven's artillery fraught, fome rattling on 
 Over the Caspian, 
 
AESTHETIC USE OF METRICAL VARIATION IO9 
 
 the words and letters in italics are meant to imitate the 
 
 storm. 
 
 Part, huge | of bulk, 
 1 2 
 
 Wallowing \ unwiet\dy, enormous in | their gait, 
 100 01 00 
 
 Tempest | the ocean. P. L. VII. 4 10. 
 
 2 o 
 
 No words are needed here to show the extraordinary 
 power of onomatopoeia contained in the words italicised 
 by means of the alliteration of w and /, the initial dactyl 
 and trochee, and the slurring before 'enormous.' 
 In P. Z. 11. 1020 the lines 
 
 So he with difficulty and labour hard, 
 Moved on, with difficulty and labour he, 
 
 have a better claim than Pope's own line to the descrip- 
 tion which follows : 
 
 When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, 
 The line too labours, and the verse moves slow. 
 
 There is a strange eerie effect in the lines : 
 
 As when the potent rod 
 
 Of Am\ram\ son, | in E\gypfs e vil </ay, 
 
 Waved round | the coast, | upralle^ j a pitchy cloud 
 11 11 
 
 Of locusts, warding on | the eas/ern wind. P. L. I. 338. 
 
 o o 
 
 The alliteration in w, p, d, t, c, calls for no particular 
 remark, but there is a kind of spell in the heavy, repeated 
 syllables of the second line, which seems to threaten 
 the doomed land with vengeance from which there is 
 no escape. 
 
 In the very forcible line in which Eve implores that 
 she alone may be punished, Milton imitates the Virgilian 
 Me, me, adsum qui feci, in me convertite tela. Aen. IX. 425. 
 
HO MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 There, with my cries importune heaven, that all 
 -The sentence from thy head removed may light 
 -On me, | sole cause | to thee of all | this woe ! 
 
 O 2 I I II 
 
 Me, me | only, | just ob|ject of | his ire. P. L. X. 936. 
 
 Both in the Latin and the English, observe how ab- 
 sorption in the one subject brings it to the front, regard- 
 less of grammatical construction, and how well this 
 absorption is expressed by the rhythm of Milton's last 
 line. 
 
 My next example shall be from Gray's Elegy, where 
 rhyme (of which we shall speak in the next chapter) 
 comes into play as an additional factor. 
 
 The curfew to//s the kne// of parting day, 
 
 The /owing hen/ | winds s/owj/y o'er the /ea, 
 1 1 
 
 The //oughman homeward plods, his weary way 
 
 And /eaves the world to */ark|ness and | to me. 
 
 o o 
 
 No one can read these lines, as they ought to be read, 
 without admiration for the skill with which they are 
 drawn out by the poet. His five-foot iambic is equal in 
 length to at least two ordinary lines of the Greek six-foot 
 iambic. This is owing in part to the comparative short- 
 ness of English words and the consequent greater crowd- 
 ing of the line, in part to the accumulation of consonants 
 in English as compared with Greek ; but it is mainly 
 owing to Gray's use of alliteration and of long vowels 
 and syllables. 
 
 The long vowels are printed in thick type. They are 
 0, in tolls (lengthened out by the following liquid), lowing, 
 slowly, o'er, homeivard; a in day, way; ah in parting, 
 darkness; e in leaves, weary, lea, me; i in winds; ou in 
 ploughman ; and even where the vowel is short the 
 
AESTHETIC USE OF METRICAL VARIATION III 
 
 syllable is often lengthened by position, as curfew, knell, 
 herd, plods, world. The rhythm is remarkably regular, 
 unbroken except for the spondee 'winds slowly' in the 
 second line, which intensifies the general effect, and the 
 pyrrhic in the fourth line, which prepares a greater 
 emphasis for the following 'me.' There is something 
 wonderfully realistic in the 'ploughman plods' and 
 ' weary way ' of the third line : but in general the smooth- 
 ness of the verse is enhanced by the alliteration in /, w, 
 and d, and altogether the music of the poem is in 
 exquisite harmony with quiet evening meditation sug- 
 gested by rural sights and sounds after the toil and 
 bustle of the day are over. 
 
 Tennyson supplies many examples both of direct and 
 of indirect imitation. Of direct in such lines as : 
 The ?iver sloped 
 
 To plunge in cat\aract y shattering on | black blocks 
 
 O O 200 I 2 2 
 
 A breadth of thunder Princess. 
 
 where the rapid fall is expressed by the onomatopoeic 
 'plunge' and by the anapaests, the resistance of the 
 rocks by the sharp uncompromising monosyllables which 
 end the line, and the dashing of the stream on the rocks 
 by the onomatopoeic words cataract, shattering following 
 
 one on the other. 
 
 The tlrum 
 ~i?eat, tnerr\ily 4/owjing shri//ed | the war tia/ fife, 
 
 2 2XOI02 001 
 
 And, in | the blast and bray | of the | long horn 
 
 2 1 
 
 And serpent-throated bu\gle, un;</u/a(ted 
 
 O 2 
 
 The banner. Princess. 
 
 Here the thump of the drum, the shrill quavering of 
 the fife, and the blare of the horn are suggested by the 
 pause after the first syllable of the second line, by the 
 
112 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 following anapaests with their accumulation of liquid 
 sounds, and then by the final spondee of the third line ; 
 while the fourth line indirectly imitates the flapping and 
 waving of the banner, by the rhythm of the words 
 'serpent-throated' and 'undulated.' 
 — As when a boat 
 Tacks, and | the slackened sail \ flaps, all | her voice 
 
 2 1 2 1 
 
 Faltering | and flutt|ering in | her throat, | she cried, 
 
 100 O IOOO O I 
 
 'My brother.' Princess. 
 
 These lines are hardly musical, but they are certainly 
 most expressive of the sudden unexpected shifting of the 
 boat's course, and again of the short, sharp sound of the 
 flapping sail, and the agitation of Psyche on detecting 
 her brother under his disguise. 
 
 Lab<?jr/ous o\rier\X i\\ory, sphere | in sphere. Princess. 
 
 OOIOOIOO I 
 
 By the alliteration of the letter r and the repeated ori, by 
 the monotonous effect of the triple dactylic rhythm which 
 commences with the second syllable, and by the iteration 
 of the word 'sphere,' the line brings before our eyes 
 the endless repetition of ball within ball, and suggests 
 the weary labour required to produce them. 
 
 I will turn now to In Memoriam and consider how 
 Tennyson has contrived to vary this simple metre to suit 
 very different moods. Take first an example of normal 
 rhythm : 
 
 I xowetiwes hold it ha\f z. sin 
 To put in words the grief I feel, 
 For words, /ike mature, half-reveal, 
 
 And half-conceal the soul te/ithi//. 
 
 But for | the u«qui|et ^eart | and bram 
 
 2 2 
 
 A use in measured /anguage lies ; 
 The szd wechamc exercise, 
 Like dull warcotics, num&ing paiw. 
 
AESTHETIC USE OF METRICAL VARIATION 113 
 
 Here the lines are perfectly regular except for the 5th. 
 This begins with trochee and anapaest to suit the inward 
 agitation, which is to be soothed and controlled by the 
 spell of ' measured language ' in the last three lines. It 
 will be noticed that all the lines except the 5th are 
 characterised by a slow, subdued rhythm, that in the last 
 three lines the pauses are similar (x a , x a x , a x a), 
 and that they are bound together by the alliteration of 
 the smooth liquids and sibilants, m, n, /, s. There is 
 assonance also in the imitative words ' dull ' and ' numb- 
 ing' in the last line. I will not here remark on the 
 rhymes, reserving their treatment for the next chapter. 
 
 Then take freer and larger movements descriptive of 
 the calm and of the unrest of nature, and of its echo in 
 the human heart : 
 
 Cal/;/ is | the worn without a sound, 
 
 2 o 
 
 Calm as | to suit a calmer grief, 
 
 2 o 
 
 And only through the/aded lea/ 
 The chesftiu/ pa//|ering to \ the ground. 
 
 00 o 
 
 Calm and | deep peace \ on this | high wold, 
 
 2 O I I II 
 
 And on | these dews \ that French the furz<», 
 00 11 
 
 And all the jiljvery gowjamers 
 00 1 
 
 That twinkle into green and gold : 
 
 Calm and | sti// /ight | on yon | ^reat plain 
 
 2 O I I II 
 
 That sweeps with all its autuwn bowers, 
 And crowded farws and lessening \owexs, 
 To wingle with the founding wain. 
 
 Calm on | the xeas, and jilver jleep, 
 
 2 o 
 
 And waves that sway themselves in rert, 
 
 And dead \ calm in | that noble breast 
 022 
 
 Which heaves but with the heaving deep. 
 
 M. 8 
 
114 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 Here the central thought ' calm ' is made prominent by 
 its repetition, and especially by its appearance as the first 
 word of each stanza, thus substituting a trochee for the 
 iamb, and by the long vowels which pervade the poem, 
 the only exceptions being where mention is made of the 
 chestnut falling through faded leaves to the ground, itself 
 a testimony to the stillness which enables us to hear it 1 ; 
 and again, in the second stanza, where the general im- 
 pression of the stillness of the dewy autumn morning is 
 momentarily broken as we turn to watch the shimmering 
 lights of ' silvery gossamers.' Observe here the imitative 
 word 'twinkle,' and again 'sweeps' in the second of 
 the third stanza. In the same -stanza the impression 
 of calm is intensified by the spondees 'deep peace,' 
 'high wold,' 'these dews.' So again in the first 
 line of the third stanza there is a recurrence of the 
 rhythm of St. 2. i : we have ' sti// /ight ' (with the same 
 dwelling on the /, as on p in dee^ /eace) and 'great 
 plain ' ; and the ' sweeping ' movement of the three lines 
 which follow suits well with the rapid survey of the wide 
 champaign stretching down to the sea, the calm of which 
 is beautifully described in the first two lines of the last 
 stanza with their soft alliteration in s and w. Then comes 
 the climax of all in the 'dead calm' (notice the strong in- 
 verted rhythm) of the lifeless form, which is being borne 
 over its surface, heaving only with the heaving deep. 
 
 Take, as a contrast to this, the lines descriptive of 
 * wild unrest ' : 
 
 The forest crack'd, the waters oirlV, 
 
 The catt/e hudWle*/ on the lea; 
 
 And K/ih/ly dash'd on /ower and /ree 
 The sunbeam j/rikes along the world 
 
 1 Cf. the quotation from Cowper below, p. 154. 
 
AESTHETIC USE OF METRICAL VARIATION 1 1 5 
 
 with the short vowels and harsh, abrupt dentals and 
 gutturals. We may compare section 107 : 
 
 1 /^lercely flies 
 The blast of North and Ear/, and ice 
 
 Maker daggers at the sharpened eaves, 
 
 And bristles all the brakes and thorns 
 To yon hard crescent, as she Jiangs 
 Above the woorf which grides and clangs 
 
 Its leafless ribs and iron horns 
 
 Together, in the drifts that pass 
 To darken on the rolling ^rine 
 That breaks the coast. 
 
 Even more suggestive of utter misery are the closing 
 lines in section 7 : 
 
 He is not here; but far away 
 The noise of life begins again, 
 And ghastly through the drizzling rain 
 
 On the I bald street \ breaks the | blank day. 
 
 OOI X 20 II 
 
 But this is not the final mood : the poet's harp may 
 'prelude woe,' but 
 
 The glory of the sum of things 
 Will flash along the chords and go. 
 
 And thus we have the exultant welcome of 'the Christ 
 that is to be ' in the stanzas beginning 
 
 Ring out, I wild bells, | to the | wild | sky, 
 
 2 2 22 00 XI 
 
 The yfying c/oud, the /rosty light : 
 The year | is '/yjing in | the night ; 
 
 020 o 
 
 Ring out, I 7vild bells, | and let him die. 
 22 22 
 
 1 In the quotations from //* Memoriam which follow, I mark 
 with italics, but without further comment, the words or letters 
 which seem to me most characteristic. 
 
 8—2 
 
Il6 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 Ring out | the o/d, | ring in | the new, 
 ii ii 
 
 Ring, hap\py bells, across the snow : 
 i i 
 
 The year is going, let him go ; 
 
 Ring out the/a/se, ring in the true. 
 ii ii 
 
 And again : 
 
 The jongs, the stirring air, 
 The life re-orient out of dust, 
 ' Cry through the jen^e to hear/en /rust 
 In that which made the world jo fair: 
 
 and this joy in the beauty of nature finds worthy ex- 
 pression in section 115: 
 
 iVbw rings | the woodland loud and long, 
 1 1 
 
 The distance takes a love\lier hue, 
 00 1 
 
 And drowned in yonder living blue 
 
 The /ark becomes a •yightlew song: 
 
 Now dance the fights on lawn and lea, 
 1 1 
 
 Theyfocks are waiter down the vale, 
 
 And milkier every milky jail 
 
 On winding j/ream or </u/ant .yea. 
 
 The following are from Shelley : 
 
 It was I one word, | mother, | one litjtle word, 
 002 1 10 22 
 
 One look, | one smile | — Oh ! he | has tram\pled me 
 22 2 2 200200 
 
 Under | his feet. Cenci. 
 
 The accentuation is very irregular, but is in the highest 
 degree appropriate to the thought, especially in the word 
 ' trampled,' which gains additional force from the absence 
 of stress in the two syllables preceding. Compare a 
 similar line in the same drama : 
 
 And though 
 111 tongues shall wound me, and our common name 
 Be as I a mark j stamped on | thine in|nocent brow. 
 
AESTHETIC USE OF METRICAL VARIATION 117 
 
 — A whirlwind swept it on 
 With yierce | gusts and \ precipitative force 
 
 2 o 
 
 Through the | white ridg|es of | the chafed sea. Alastor. 
 
 O O I IOO 
 
 It is a garish, broad, and peering day, 
 
 Zoud, /ight, sus/icious, full of eyes and ears ; 
 
 And every filtle corner, nook, and ho/e, 
 
 Is /en|e/ra|/ed with | the in\solent right. Cenci. 
 
 OO O 3 I 
 
 The tilgers /eap up | when they fee/ | the s/ow brine 
 
 01 2 
 
 Craw/ing inch | by inch on | them ; hair, ears, | limbs and eyne, 
 
 103 OI3 12 102 
 
 Stand rigj id with ^or|ror ; a /oud | long hoarse cry 
 
 112 
 
 Bursts at once [from their vitals tremendously]. 
 
 Vision of the Sea. 
 
 The splendid effect of alliteration and rebellious stress in 
 the first three lines suffers terribly from the bathos of the 
 bracketed words in the fourth line. 
 
 Pope has sometimes an admirably expressive line, as 
 in the Essay on Man : 
 
 All sly i slow things | with cir\cumspec\\\\t eyes 
 122 1 
 
 and in Imitations of Horace : 
 
 Who /roud of /edigree is poor of /urse 
 
 where alliteration points the antithesis. 
 
 Cowper has a very notable rhythm in the second of 
 the two following verses : 
 
 Can a | wowaw's | /ewder | rare A 
 
 10 10 10 I 
 
 Cease /ojward the | child she | £are A ? 
 
 10 JO I 
 
 Yes, she | may forjge/ful | 6e A , 
 
 2 O X O I I 
 
 Ye/ will I I re\memfer \ thee A . 
 1020 10 2 
 
Il8 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 Mine is | an un|changing | love A , 
 
 2 O 10 
 
 Higher | than the | heights ajbove A , 
 
 2 2 O 
 
 Deeper | than the | depths be'neath A , 
 
 2 O 2 O 
 
 Free, and | faithful, | strong as | c/eath A 
 
 2 10 2 2 
 
 the metre of which may be represented as follows : 
 
 a , x x x a x , a , 
 a x , x x a , x a , 
 a x , x x a , x a , 
 a , x a x , a , x a 
 
 But none beats Kingsley in the well-known poems 
 which follow : 
 
 They rowed | her in | across | the ro//|ing foam, 
 The cr\x\el crawl\ing foam, 
 The cru\el hung\ry foam, 
 To her grave j bexide | the .yea, 
 But Jtill | the boat | men hear | her call \ the cat|t/e home 
 Across | the sands | of Z>ee. 
 
 A Clear | and cool, | A clear | and cool, 
 By /augh|ing sha/|/ow and /easing pool ; 
 
 A Cool | and clear, | A cool \ and clear, 
 By shi\ning shin\gle and foamjing weir; • 
 
 A Un\der the crag | where the oujze/ sings, 
 And the ijvied wall \ where the church|-be// rings ; 
 
 A Un\dex\leo\ | for the zm\dev\led ; 
 A Play | by me, bathe | in me, wothjer and child. 
 
 A Z>an£ | and foul, | A dank \ and fou/, 
 By the smo\ky town | in its murk\y cowl ; 
 
 A Fou/ | and dank, | A fou/ \ and dank, 
 By wharf | and jewjer and sl'\\my banY ; 
 
 A Dark\er and dark\er the furth|er I go, 
 A i?a|ser and 3a|ser the rich|er I grow ; 
 
 A Who | dare jport | with the jin-kefi/ed? 
 A Shrink | from me, turn | from me, /«oth|er and child. 
 
AESTHETIC USE OF METRICAL VARIATION I 1 9 
 
 A Strong | and /tee, | A strong | and free, 
 Theyfoodjgates are oipen away | to the sea; 
 A Free | and strong, j A free | and strong, 
 A C/eans|ing my streams. | as I hur|ry a/ong 
 
 To the go/Wen sands | and the /ea/iing £ar, 
 And the /ain/|/ess ride | that awai/s | me afar, 
 
 As I /ose I myself \ in the infinite wain, 
 Zike a sou/ | that has sinned | and is />ar\doned again. 
 
 A Unldefi/ed | for the un|«/efi/ed ; 
 A /Vay I by me, bathe | in me, wothjer and child. 
 
 KlNGSLEY. 
 
 In this perfect lyric, notice the emphasis given to the 
 three ' motives,' * Clear and cool,' * Dank and foul," 
 'Strong and free,' by repetition and double truncation. 
 Then observe the fresh transparency of the mountain 
 stream marked by the long vowels and beautiful allitera- 
 tion in c and / and /, by the ' shining shingle and foaming 
 weir'; and contrast the growing degradation of the 
 second stage, richer and darker and baser, in the dank 
 and foul surroundings of the smoky, murky town with 
 its sewers and slimy banks ; and finally the redemption 
 wrought out in the third verse, where the victorious 
 anapaests burst the limits of the eight-line stanza, and the 
 'golden sands and the leaping bar' replace the 'laughing 
 shallow and leaping pool ' of the first stage of innocence. 
 Another fine example of truncation is Tennyson's 
 poem beginning 
 
 A Break, A break, A break, 
 At the foot I of thy crags, | O sea 
 
 where the recurrent monosyllable gives a perfect imitation 
 of the slow monotonous iteration of the wave breaking 
 on the rocks. 
 
 The above quotations have been selected for the 
 most part with a view to exemplify the advantages of 
 irregularity ; to show how the various licenses mentioned 
 
120 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 have been used by the poets to enhance the beauty and 
 expressiveness of their poems. It is possible however 
 for liberty to run into anarchy and antinomianism in 
 metre, as in politics or religion ; and in extreme cases, as 
 not unfrequently in Walt Whitman, poetry and metre 
 altogether disappear. Without going to such lengths, it 
 seems to me that either from carelessness or love of 
 novelty or a wish to be realistic, even great poets have at 
 times fallen into unnecessary or even inexcusable harsh- 
 ness or slovenliness. Many of the examples that follow 
 are very expressive ; but it may be doubted whether ex- 
 pressiveness is not bought at too high a cost of the 
 dignity and beauty of verse in Tennyson's Harold, v. 2 : 
 
 We should have a hand 
 To grasp the world with, and a foot to stamp (it 
 -Flat. Praise the Saints. It is over. No more blood 
 
 and Browning's Ring and the Book, iv. 36 : 
 
 One calls | the square | round, t' oth|er the | round square 
 
 I I O I I IOOI X 
 
 VI. 1319 That I I liked, that | was the | best thing, | she said. 
 202 2 00 11 01 
 
 1643 I heard | charge, and | bore question, and | told tale 
 
 01 I O IIOO II 
 
 Noted I down in | the book I there, | turn and see 
 10 10 
 
 If by j one jot | or titjtle I va|ry now. 
 
 I O I I 001 
 
 1338 The sun | now like | an im|mense egg | of fire. 
 1 100 1 1 
 
 383 Heads that | wag, eyes | that twink|le modified mirth. 
 
 I O I I 1 
 
 134 — Understands how law might take 
 
 -Service like mine, of brain and heart and hand, 
 
 In good I part. Bet|ter late | than nev|er: law, 
 1 1 
 
 You understand | of a sud|den, gospel too 
 
 00 1 
 
 Has a I claim here. 
 
AESTHETIC USE OF METRICAL VARIATION 121 
 
 I. 1097 — Made a Cross 
 
 Fit to I die looking on | and pray|ing with, 
 
 i o a i 
 
 Just as I well as | if i|vory | or gold. 
 
 I O I o 
 
 1. 749 I can detach from me, commission forth 
 Half of my soul ; which in its pilgrimage 
 O'er old unxcandered 7#aste ways of the world, 
 May chance upon some fragment of a whole, 
 Rag of |y?esh, scrap | of bone | in </im | t/isuse, 
 
 X O I I 
 
 Smoking | y?ax that | /ed /ire | once : prompt | therein 
 1010 11 1 1 
 
 I enter, s/ark-/ike, put | old /owers | to //ay, 
 1 1 
 
 .Mish /ines | out to | the /imit, /ead | forth /ast 
 
 I I I O II 
 
 What shall | be wis|tily seen, | wurwur|ingly heard, 
 
 I o OOI IOOOI 
 
 il/istajkenly felt: | then write | my nawe | with Faust's. 
 001 1 1 
 
 X. 561 Minted | forth to | go /tide | //ead, starve | and die. 
 
 10 I O I 2 I 2 
 
 x. 877 All ajlike col|oured, all descried akin 
 
 I O I I 
 
 By one | and the | same pitchjy fur|nace stirred 
 00 11 
 
 At the cenjtre. 
 
 00 1 
 
 XI. 233 — Down you kneel, 
 
 In you're | pushed, ojver you | the other drops, 
 
 10 2 x o o 
 
 Tight you're | clipped, whiz, | there's the | blade cleaves | 
 
 20 I 2 IOII 
 
 its best, 
 
 Out trundles body, down | flops head | on floor; 
 1 1 
 
 And where's your soul gone? 
 
 Swinburne's Marino Faliero, p. 5 : 
 
 Pride, from | /rofound|est -fcumjbleness of //eart 
 10 00 
 
 Born, self-juplift \ at once | and self-|subdued, 
 1 1 
 
 Glowed, see|ing his face | whose hand I had borne such part. 
 
122 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 Exercises on Chapter X. 
 
 Point out, to the best of your ability, ivhat constitutes the beauty of 
 the rhythm in the following lines, noticing especially the relation of 
 sound to sense. 
 
 Our revels now are ended. These our actors, 
 
 As I foretold you, were all spirits, and 
 
 Are melted into air, into thin air : 
 
 And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, 
 
 The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
 
 The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
 
 Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve 
 
 And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 
 
 Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff 
 
 As dreams are made on, and our little life 
 
 Is rounded with a sleep. The Tempest. 
 
 How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank ! 
 
 Here will we sit and let the sounds of music 
 
 Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night 
 
 Become the touches of sweet harmony. Merchant of V. 
 
 Duncan is in his grave ; 
 After life's fitful fever he sleeps well. Macbeth. 
 
 Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no more, 
 
 For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead ; 
 
 Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor, 
 
 So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, 
 
 And yet anon repairs his drooping head, 
 
 And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore 
 
 Flames in the forehead of the morning sky; 
 
 So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high, 
 
 Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves, 
 
 Where, other groves and other streams along, 
 
 With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves, 
 
 And hears the unexpressive nuptial song, 
 
 In the blest kingdoms meek of Joy and Love. Lycidas. 
 
 — And what resounds 
 In fable or romance of Uther's son, 
 Begirt with British and Armoric knights, 
 And all who since, baptized or infidel, 
 
AESTHETIC USE OF METRICAL VARIATION 1 23 
 
 Jousted in Aspramont or Montalban, 
 
 Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond, 
 
 Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore, 
 
 When Charlemagne with all his peerage fell 
 
 By Fontarabbia. P. L. 1. 
 
 He who hath bent him o'er the dead, 
 
 Ere the first day of death is fled, 
 
 The first dark day of nothingness, 
 
 The last of danger and distress, — 
 
 Before Decay's effacing fingers 
 
 Have swept the lines where beauty lingers — 
 
 And marked the mild angelic air, 
 
 The rapture of repose that's there — 
 
 * * # * 
 
 And but for that sad, shrouded eye, 
 
 That fires not, wins not, weeps not now, 
 And but for that chill changeless brow, 
 
 Whose touch thrills with mortality, 
 
   # * * 
 
 Some moments, aye, one treacherous hour, 
 
 He still might doubt the tyrant's power; 
 
 So fair, so calm, so softly sealed, 
 
 The first, last look, by death revealed. Byron. 
 
 Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird ! 
 
 No hungry generations tread thee down ; 
 The voice I hear this passing night was heard 
 
 In ancient days by emperor and clown: 
 Perhaps the self-same song that found a path 
 
 Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, 
 She stood in tears amid the alien corn ; 
 
 The same that oft-times hath 
 Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam 
 
 Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn. Keats. 
 
 The splendour falls on castle walls 
 
 And snowy summits old in story: 
 
 The long light shakes across the lakes, 
 
 And the wild cataract leaps in glory. 
 Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, 
 Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. 
 
 Tennyson. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 RHYME, STANZA, REFRAIN. 
 
 Rhyme may be regarded as a further development of 
 alliteration, of which we spoke in the last chapter, while it 
 also accentuates the principle of the regularly recurring 
 stress, which we have seen to be the foundation of English 
 metre. The simplest kind of rhyme is the monosyllabic 
 'perfect rhyme,' where the last syllable of one line is 
 repeated without change in another line. This is not 
 uncommon in Italian poetry, but the English rule re- 
 quires the combination of identity and diversity of sound. 
 Thus the final vowel-sound of one line, with its suc- 
 ceeding consonants, if there are any, is repeated at the 
 end of another line, while the consonants immediately 
 preceding the vowel differ, as 'go' 'so,' 'gong' 'song.' 
 
 We find occasional examples both of rhyme and of 
 alliteration in the Latin poets, especially in the oldest and 
 the latest. Thus in Lucr. I. 271 foil, we find alliteration 
 in v, f, m, t, p, r. 
 
 /Vincipio vznti vis vexbera.t inci/a /or/us 
 * * * * 
 
 won/esque suprewos 
 Silz/i/ragis z/exa/ Jiabris : \tz. /er/uri/ acri 
 Cum fremitu saetuAjue winaci murmme z/enAis. 
 
RHYME, STANZA, REFRAIN 1 25 
 
 Ennius goes farther in the famous line condemned 
 by Cicero ', 
 
 71/e /u/e, 7a/i, /ibi /ante, /yranne, /ulis/i. 
 
 The same poet has the following example of three-fold 
 disyllabic rhyme, of which Cicero justly says, 'Prae- 
 clarum carmen ! est enim et rebus et verbis et modis 
 
 lugubre 2 ' : 
 
 Haec omnia z>idi inftammari 
 Priamo v\ z>itam tv'xtari 
 \ov\% aram sanguine \wxpari. 
 
 Virgil and Horace suppply specimens of leonine, i.e. 
 of internal and final rhymes, the former in the witch's 
 incantation (Eel. viii. 80), 
 
 Limus ut hie durescit, et haec ut cera Xxquescit; 
 the latter in his first Ode 
 
 Hunc si mobilium turba Qmritium 
 
 * # * # 
 
 Ilium si prof>rio condidit Worreo 
 Quicquid de Libym verritur zrets. 
 
 So Ovid, Heroid. viii. 27, 
 
 Vir, precor, uxoH, frater succurre sorori. 
 
 In the A. P. 99 we find a specimen of final rhyme — 
 
 Non satis est pulchra* esse poemata, dulcia sunto, 
 Et quocumque volent animum auditoris agunto. 
 
 We have a curious specimen of rhyming verse in 
 Hadrian's Address to the Departing Soul, 
 
 Animula vagula blandula 
 Hospes comesque corporis, 
 Quae nunc abibis in loca 
 Pallidula, rigida, nudula? 
 
 Rhyme is however only sporadic till the fourth 
 
 1 Herenn. iv. 18. 2 Tusc. III. 45. 
 
126 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 century, when we find, though rarely, such hymns as 
 that of Pope Damasus on S. Agatha, 
 
 Martyris ecce dies Agat/iae 
 Virginis emicat eximuz^, 
 Christus earn sibi qua social 
 Et diadema duplex decora/. 
 
 But the real power of the rhyming hymn did not 
 show itself till much later, as in the truncated eight-foot 
 trochaic of the following Pseudo-Augustinian hymn 1 : 
 
 Ad perennis vitae fontem || mens sitivit arida A , 
 Claustra carnis praesto frangi || clausa quaerit anima A , 
 Gliscit, ambit, eluctatur || exul frui patria A . 
 Dum pressuris et aerumnis || se gemit obnoxiam A , 
 Quam amisit, dum deliquit, || contemplatur gloriam A ; 
 Praesens malum auget boni || perditi memoriam A . 
 
 In Mediaeval Latin verse hiatus is universally allow- 
 able, and rhyme and accent take the place of quantity 2 . 
 
 We find a seven-foot trochaic with internal trunca- 
 tion employed for secular purposes in the famous drinking- 
 song ascribed to Walter Mapes in the 12 th century. 
 
 Mihi 3 est proposition A II in taberna mori, 
 Vmu-m sit appositum A II morientis ori, 
 Et 3 dicant cum venerint A II Angelorum chori, 
 Deus sit propitiiis A II hiuc potatori. 
 
 The introduction of rhyme into vernacular poetry 
 was thus a natural consequence of the influence of the 
 Latin Church and the Latin language. Where that 
 
 1 Really due to Damiani in the eleventh century. 
 
 2 Compare Trench, Sacred Latin Poetry, Dingeldein, Der Reim 
 bei den Griechen u. R'omern ; Manitius, Gesch. d. christlich-latein- 
 ischen Poesie, and Milman's Latin Christianity, Bk xiv. ch. 4. 
 
 3 So printed in Milman's History. In the Camden Society ed. 
 of Mapes (Confessio Goliae, 11. 45 — 48) the reading is ' meum ' and 
 'ut.' The latter seems to give more point than ' et ' to the pre- 
 ceding line, as connecting it with the reception of the Viaticum. 
 
RHYME, STANZA, REFRAIN \2f 
 
 influence was strongest, as in France, rhyme quickly 
 established itself: where the Latin influence was com- 
 paratively weak, as in England, rhyme showed itself 
 later 1 , and met with a much more prolonged resistance 
 from the opposing principle of alliteration, which was 
 the distinctive mark of the northern metres. 
 
 After the Norman conquest the regular rhyming 
 metre of the French gained the upper hand over the 
 irregular alliterative metre of the English. Even the 
 poems least affected by French influence discard allitera- 
 tion and adopt the iambic rhythm, though without 
 rhyme, as the Ormu/um, c. 1 200 ; or slide from rhyme 
 to alliteration and back again, as the contemporary poem 
 of Layamon ; or combine the two, as Minot c. 1350 2 . It 
 was not till the latter half of the 14th century that the 
 regular rhyming iambic achieved its final triumph under 
 Chaucer, who himself testifies to the difficulty he found in 
 subduing the refractory English language to the strict laws 
 of accent and rhyme prescribed by the French makers. 
 
 Compare the passages quoted by Courthope (1. p. 327) 
 
 But Chaucer (though he can but lewedly 
 
 On metres and on riming craftily), 
 
 Hath sayd hem in swiche English as he can. 
 
 Canterbury Tales. 
 
 But, for the rime is light and lewde, 
 Yet make it somewhat agreeable, 
 Though some verse fayle in a sillable, 
 And that I do no diligence 
 To shewe crafte but sentence. 
 
 Address to Apollo in the House of Fame. 
 
 1 The earliest example of rhyme in Anglo-Saxon poetry is ascribed 
 to the end of the 10th century. 
 
 2 See Courthope, Hist, of English Poetry, Vol. I. ch. 4 'On the 
 Stages of Anglo-Norman Poetry,' especially pp. 123 — 128. 
 
128 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 In the Prologue to the 'Parson's Tale' quoted by 
 Courthope (i. p. 255) Chaucer seems to complain of both 
 the alliterative and the rhyming metres. 
 
 But trusteth well, I am a Southren man, 
 I cannot geste — rum, ram, ruf— by lettre, 
 Ne, God wot, rym holde I but litel bettre. 
 
 There was however a revival of the Old Anglo-Saxon 
 metre only a few years before the appearance of the 
 Canterbury Tales, when Langland brought out his very 
 popular Vision of Piers Plowman, of which we may take 
 the beginning as a specimen. 
 
 In a somer seson || when soft was the xonne, 
 I skove me in .r^roudes || as la sAepe were, 
 
 the law of the verse being that it consists of two sections, 
 'each containing two or more accented initial syllables. 
 Of these four syllables the two in the first section, and, as 
 a rule, the first of the two in the second section, are 
 alliterated.' 
 
 By the beginning of the 15th century the victory of 
 rhyme, frequently combined with alliteration, was com- 
 plete. It was not till about the middle of the 16th 
 century that Surrey gave the first specimen of English 
 blank verse in his translation of the Aeneid. Sackville, 
 in the tragedy of Ferrex and Porrex brought out in 
 1 56 1, was the first dramatist to make use of the freedom 
 claimed by Surrey, and was followed by all the great 
 Elizabethan dramatists. Thus Marlowe in the Prologue 
 to Tamerlaine 
 
 From jigging veins of rhyming mother- wits 
 And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay, 
 We'll lead you to the stately seats of war, 
 Where you shall hear the Scythian Tamberlaine 
 Threatening the world with high astounding terms. 
 
129 
 
 Some years earlier Roger Ascham had declaimed 
 against 'our rude beggarly ryming, brought first into 
 Italie by Gothes and Hunnes when all good verses and 
 all good learning were destroyed by them \ 
 
 So Ben Jonson in his ' Fit of Rhyme against Rhyme ' 
 ( Underwoods 48) 
 
 Greek was free from rhyme's infection, 
 Happy Greek, by this protection, 
 
 Was not spoiled. 
 Whilst the Latin, queen of tongues, 
 Is not yet freed from rhyme's wrongs, 
 
 But rests foiled. 
 
 So too Milton, in the Preface prefixed to the second 
 edition of Paradise Lost in 1669, where he speaks of 
 11 Rime being no necessary adjunct or true ornament 
 of poem or good verse, in longer works particularly, but 
 the invention of a barbarous age, to set "Off wretched 
 matter and lame meeter....Not without cause therefore, 
 some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have 
 rejected Rime both in longer and shorter works, as have 
 also, long since, our best English tragedies, as a thing of 
 itself, to all judicious ears, trivial and of no true musical 
 delight ; which consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity 
 of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one 
 verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like 
 endings, a fault avoyded by the learned Ancients both in 
 poetry and all good oratory. This neglect then of Rime... 
 is to be esteemed an example set, the first in English, of 
 ancient liberty recovered to the Heroic Poem from the 
 troublesome and modern bondage of Riming." 
 
 Rhyme however was not without its champions from 
 an early period in the 17th century 2 , and in spite of 
 
 1 See Chapters on Metre, pp. 260 f. ed. 2. 
 
 2 E.g. Daniel in answer to Campion. 
 
130 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 Milton and Paradise Lost, it was with the rhyming poets 
 that the victory lay until late in the 18th century. 
 Mr Gosse has pointed out, in his Lectures on the 
 development of English poetry from Shakespeare to 
 Pope, the epoch-making influence of Waller 1 , of whom 
 Dryden wrote 'The excellence and dignity of rhyme 
 were never fully known till Mr Waller taught it : he 
 first... showed us how to conclude the sense most com- 
 monly in distichs, which, in the verse of those before 
 him, runs on for so many lines together, that the reader 
 is out of breath to overtake it.' Waller wished to expel 
 blank verse even from the drama, and actually rewrote 
 the last part of Fletcher's Maid's Tragedy in rhyme, in 
 order to prove the superiority of the latter. The reaction 
 in favour of rhyme was reinforced by French influence 
 on the royalist exiles during the Commonwealth j and 
 shortly after the Restoration Dryden gave an example 
 of dramatic rhyme in his Rival Ladies, and defended 
 the practice in the Preface to his tragedy of the Indian 
 Emperor published in 1667, and in the Essay on 
 
 1 Mr Courthope thinks this much exaggerated. ' Not only do 
 we find Popian couplets in Chaucer, but from Drayton onward, 
 through Drummond, Sir John Beaumont (d. 1627), and Sandys, 
 the way had been gradually prepared for Dryden.' This judgment 
 is confirmed by Beaumont's verses on the True Form of English 
 Poetry, quoted in the forthcoming 3rd volume of the Hist, of Eng. 
 Poetry, p. 197 : 
 
 In every language now in Europe spoke 
 By nations which the Roman empire broke 
 The relish of the Muse consists in rhyme ; 
 One verse must meet another like a chime. 
 Our Saxon shortness hath peculiar grace 
 In choice of words fit for the ending place ; 
 Which leave impression on the mind as well 
 As closing sounds of some delightful bell. 
 
RHYME, STANZA, REFRAIN 131 
 
 Dramatic Poetry published about the same time. In 
 the prologue to Aurengzebe (1676) however, he admits 
 that he has doubts as to the advantages of rhyme in 
 dramatic poetry, and 
 
 To confess a truth, though out of time, 
 Grows weary of his long-loved mistress Rhyme. 
 Passion's too fierce to be in fetters bound. 
 
 In All for Love (1678) he returned to unrhymed 
 verse for the drama; but still held to rhyme for all 
 other forms of poetry, and was followed herein by Pope 
 and the writers of his school, till Thomson in his 
 Seasons (about 1730), Young in his Night Thoughts 
 (1761), and Cowper in the Task (1785), re-asserted the 
 claims of blank verse for didactic poetry. 
 
 I return now to the consideration of the nature and 
 laws of rhyme. Besides the ordinary monosyllabic rhyme 
 of which we have spoken, English verse admits disyllabic 
 and trisyllabic rhymes', where the initial consonants differ 
 and the last syllable or syllables of the two words are 
 identical, as 
 
 Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly, 
 Most musical, most melancholy Milton. 
 
 To know the change, and feel it, 
 
 When there is none to heal it Keats. 
 
 and 
 
 Take her up tenderly, 
 
 Lift her with care, 
 Fashioned so slenderly, 
 
 Young, and so fair. Hood. 
 
 1 Sir J. Harington in the preface to his translation of Orlando 
 Furioso, published in 1591, mentions that he had been attacked for 
 his use of disyllabic and trisyllabic rhyme (such as 'signify — 
 dignify, ' ' hide away — bide away '), and shelters himself under the 
 example of Sir Philip Sidney. 
 
132 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 Both these kinds of rhyme are more frequent in 
 comic passages, particularly when the rhyme is made up 
 of more than one word ; compare 
 
 Whose honesty they all durst swear for ; 
 
 Though not a man of them knew wherefore. 
 
 When Gospel-Trumpeter, surrottnded 
 
 With long-eared rout, to battle sounded, 
 
 And pulpit, drum ecclesia^V, 
 
 Was beat with fist instead of a stick ; 
 
 Then did Sir Knight abandon dwelling, 
 
 And out he rode a colonelling. Hudibras. 
 
 Her favourite science was the mathewa/zVa/, 
 Her noblest virtue was her magnanimity, 
 
 Her wit (she sometimes tried at wit) was Attic all, 
 Her serious sayings darkened to sublimity: 
 
 In short, in all things she was fairly what I call 
 A prodigy — her morning dress was dimity, 
 
 Her evening silk or, in the summer, muslin, 
 
 And other stuffs with which I won't stay puzzling. 
 
 Byron. 
 
 Rhymes may be either strict, where there is identity, 
 or loose, where there is only approximation of the final 
 vowel-sound and succeeding consonants. Sometimes an 
 apparent looseness is caused by change of pronunciation. 
 Thus in Pope's lines 
 
 Where thou, great Anna, whom three realms obey, 
 Did'st sometimes counsel take, and sometimes tea. 
 
 Rape of the Lock. 
 
 The rhyme witnesses to the French pronunciation of 'tea.' 
 So the old pronunciation of 'Rome' appears in the 
 
 lines 
 
 From the same foes at last both felt their doom, 
 And the same age saw learning fall and Rome. 
 
 Essay on Criticism. 
 
 It is sad to have to think that Denham and Pope 
 and their contemporaries pronounced 'join' as 'jine,' 
 
RHYME, STANZA, REFRAIN 133 
 
 but such rhymes as the following seem to leave little 
 doubt on the subject : 
 
 Waller was smooth, but Dryden taught to join 
 The varying verse, the full resounding line, 
 The long majestic march, and energy divine. 
 
 Thus he the Church at once protects and spoils: 
 But princes' swords are sharper than their styles. 
 
 The commonest irregularity in rhyme is perhaps 
 where a short vowel is made to answer to a long vowel, 
 as in Shelley's Recollection 'There — woodpecker'; in 
 the Euganean Hills 'feet — yet,' 'lie — agony,' 'hail — 
 majestical,' 'supplies — melodies'; in Pope's Essay on 
 Criticism 'esteem — them,' 'glass — place,' 'light — wit'; 
 and more generally, where differing values of the same 
 vowel are made to rhyme, as in Wordsworth's Fountain 
 'none — gone,' Pope's Criticism 'satires — dedicators,' 
 Campbell's River of Life ' wan — man ' ; Wordsworth's 
 Yarrow 'come — home,' his Ode 'groves — loves,' 'song — 
 tongue'; Shelley's Euganean Hills 'now — glow,' 'cove — 
 love.' differing vowel-sounds are also often made to 
 rhyme, especially in disyllables, as in Burns 'fondly — 
 kindly,' 'dearly — Mary,' in Wordsworth's Ode 'weather- 
 hither,' 'nature — creature,' in Shelley 'heaven — striven,' 
 'black — beck,' 'death — path'; in Hymns 'merit — spirit,' 
 'mourn — return,' 'eve — live,' 'adore Thee — glory,' 'before 
 Thee — glory,' 'created — seated,' 'rare — myrrh,' 'cure — 
 power,' 'hosts — trusts,' 'ear — care.' One is grieved to 
 find the fashionable vulgarity of the omission of the 
 final g in the present participle countenanced by Words- 
 worth and Shelley in two of their finest poems 
 
 O evil day ! if I were sullen 
 While Earth herself is adorning 
 This sweet May -morning; 
 
134 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 And the children are culling 
 
 Fresh flowers — Ode. 
 
 * # * * 
 
 As an eagle pursuing 
 A dove to its ruin 
 Down the streams of the cloudy wind. Arethusa. 
 
 I mentioned above that 'perfect rhyme,' where the 
 rhyming syllable or syllables are repeated without any 
 variation, was forbidden by the rule of English metre ; 
 but the rule is not always obeyed : thus we find ' passion 
 — compassion ' rhyming in the hymn : 
 
 In this Thy bitter Passion 
 Good Shepherd, think of me 
 With thy most sweet compassion 
 
 and similarly ' Almighty — Mighty ' in Heber's ' Holy, 
 Holy, Holy.' 
 
 There is, however, higher authority for this irregularity, 
 which dates back as far as Chaucer. Such rhymes as 
 the following are frequently found in his writings : 'defence 
 — offence,' 'disport — port,' 'hold — behold,' 'way — away,' 
 'kind — unkind,' 'accord — record,' 'darkness — brightness,' 
 'bless — humbless,' 'visage — usage': also in Spenser, as 
 'servaunt — vaunt,' 'attend — contend,' 'supply — multiply,' 
 ' lavishness — heaviness — bitterness,' 'lay — delay/ 'stand — 
 understand': and so Shelley, in Stanzas written near 
 Naples, has 'motion — emotion.' 
 
 The actual repetition of words identical in sound and 
 spelling is admitted by the same poets, provided that the 
 meaning is different, as in Spenser's 
 
 The angelical soft trembling voices made 
 To the instruments divine respondence meet; 
 The silver-sounding instruments did meet 
 With the base murmur of the water's fall. 
 
 So Chaucer makes ' rede ' = ' red ' rhyme with ' rede ' = 
 'read.' 
 
RHYME, STANZA, REFRAIN I 35 
 
 This provision however is not always insisted on. 
 In the Epithalamion Spenser makes 
 
 Bid her awake therefore and soon her dight 
 rhyme with 
 
 And whilst she doth her dight. 
 And in F.-Q. vi. 12. 23 we find the rhymes 
 
 In which he many massacres had left 
 # * * * 
 
 Who now no place besides unsought had left, 
 
 where the word is the same in meaning as well as in 
 sound. So Shelley in Rosalind repeats the words 'way' 
 and 'solitude' as rhymes 1 . 
 
 Of course the rule against 'perfect rhyme' does not 
 apply in the case of Refrain, where repetition is intention- 
 ally employed for the sake of emphasis. 
 
 By the term 'Refrain' or 'Burden' is meant the repe- 
 tition of a sound or name or word or sentence, for the 
 purpose of dwelling on some leading idea or sentiment, and 
 thus concentrating the general motive of the poem in one 
 short expression. Probably the simplest and earliest use 
 of such repetition was to enable the audience to take 
 their part in the song or hymn. Thus the Jews employed 
 the Amen and Hallelujah, and the refrain in the 136th 
 psalm 'His mercy endureth for ever.' The Doxology, 
 the Kyrie Eleison and the responses of the Litanies 
 answered the same purpose among the Christians. In 
 like manner we have the grand refrain of the Chorus in 
 the Agamemnon alkwov alkwov ci7re, to 8* cv vik<xt<d; the 
 wedding chorus in Catullus 
 
 O Hymenaee, Hymen ades, O Hymenaee, 
 
 1 See quotation in Chapters, p. 235. 
 
136 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 and that in the Pervigilium Veneris 
 
 Cras amet qui nunquam amavit, quique amavit eras amet. 
 
 The popular use still remains in catches and choruses, 
 such as 'Britannia rules the waves'; the religious use in 
 many of our Hymns and Services; the literary in such 
 poems as Tennyson's Mariana and Oriana. In the last 
 the refrain consists simply in the repetition of a name, as 
 in Cowper's My Mary, and in some litanies. It is not 
 even necessary that a chorus should have any definite 
 meaning at all. The mere repetition of sound is enough 
 to inflame and delight, as was shown in the popularity of 
 * Lilliburlero,' and the 'hip, hip, hip,' said to be derived 
 from so remote and little popular a source as 'Jeru- 
 salem ^st/erdita.' The refrain often admits of variation, 
 as, for instance, in the Lady of Shalott, Mariana, and in 
 many hymns. 
 
 The connexion between refrain and rhyme is not 
 always the same. Compare the beautiful song numbered 
 xxii. in the Golden Treasury 
 
 Rest you, then, rest, sad eyes! 
 
 Melt not in weeping! 
 
 While She lies sleeping 
 
 Softly, now softly lies, 
 
 Sleeping ! 
 
 and in 
 
 Take, O take those lips away, 
 * # * * 
 
 But my kisses bring again, 
 
 Bring again — 
 Seals of love, but sealed in vain, 
 
 Sealed in vain ! 
 
 In both these cases the rhyme is already complete, 
 the refrain being merely a beautiful addition : in other 
 cases the refrain^ if it may be so called, furnishes a 
 
RHYME, STANZA, REFRAIN 1 37 
 
 necessary rhyme, as an integral part of the poem. Com- 
 pare the following songs of Burns : 
 
 Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose 
 
 Frae aff its thorny tree; 
 And my fause luver staw the rose, 
 
 But left the thorn wi' me. 
 And fare thee weel, my only Luve\ 
 
 And fare thee weel awhile! 
 And I will come again, my Luve, 
 Tho' it were ten thousand mile. 
 Should auld acquaintance be forgot, 
 
 And never brought to min'? 
 Should auld acquaintance be forgot, 
 And days o' lang A syne? 
 
 For auld A lang A syne, my dear, 
 
 For auld A lang A syne, 
 We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet, 
 For auld A lang A syne. 
 
 A somewhat different case is where there is a repe- 
 tition of a word attached to a rhyme, as often in Scotch 
 
 songs, e.g. 
 
 I'm wearing awcC , Jean, 
 
 Like snaw when it's thaw, Jean, 
 
 I'm wearing awa 1 
 
 To the land of the leal. 
 
 A negligence, probably peculiar to Shelley, is seen in 
 
 the following lines, 
 
 When lampj-like Spain, | who now | relumes | her fire 
 On freedom's hearth, { grew dim | with em|pire 
 
 where the second half of ' empire ' is disyllabized in the 
 second line, the last syllable being treated as if it rhymed 
 with the entire word fire. 
 
 Another irregularity is where a masculine line is 
 made to rhyme with a feminine line, as in Shelley's 
 Hymn to Mercury 
 
 She gave | to light | a babe | all babes | excelling 
 
138 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 rhymes with 
 
 A shep|herd of | their dreams | a cow | stealing, 
 a line in which there is no superfluous syllable, but the 
 last foot is a trochee. 
 
 A similar fault is where an accented syllable is 
 made to rhyme with an unaccented, as in Shelley's 
 Recollection l , 
 
 We wan|dered to | the Pine | Forest 
 
 That skirts | the 0|cean's foam ; | 
 The light |est wind | was in | its nest, \ 
 
 The tempjest in | its home.| 
 
 Shelley is also careless in other respects, sometimes 
 leaving unrhymed lines in rhymed passages, sometimes 
 allowing intervals of as many as ten lines to separate the 
 rhymes. For examples see Chapters on Metre, p. 255 f. 
 
 Lastly, the place of rhyme is sometimes taken, as in 
 Spanish and some other languages, by assonance, where 
 there is agreement in the vowel only. This is imitated 
 by George Eliot in the Spanish Gypsy, quoted by 
 Gummere p. 156, 
 
 Maiden crowned with glossy blackness, 
 
 Lithe as panther forest-roaming, 
 Long-armed naiad, when she dances, 
 
 On a stream of ether floating. 
 
 I proceed now to consider varieties of rhyme, arising, 
 not from greater or less similarity of sound, but from the 
 position and frequency of the rhyme. The most im- 
 portant of these varieties is internal or leonine rhyme, of 
 which we had some examples from the Latin at the 
 beginning of the chapter. Sometimes these are scattered 
 
 1 So Campion makes 
 
 Of Nepjtune's em|pire let | us sing 
 rhyme with 
 
 Down the | high mount [ains s\i(ding. 
 
RHYME. STANZA, REFRAIN 1 39 
 
 irregularly, as in two out of the 40 lines, of which the 
 Pibroch of Donald Dhu is composed : 
 
 daet. 2. Leave the deer, leave the steer. 
 
 Leave nets and barges ; 
 Come with your fighting gear, 
 Broadswords and targes. 
 
 Cast your plaids, draw your blades, 
 
 Forward each man set ! 
 Pibroch of Donuil Dhu, 
 
 Knell for the onset. 
 
 The stanza employed in Coleridge's Ancient Mariner is 
 ordinarily four-lined iambic, with anapaestic substitution : 
 the 2nd and 4th lines have final rhyme ; but occasionally 
 we find internal rhyming in the other lines, as 
 
 And now there came both mist and snow, 
 And it grew wondrous cold : 
 And ice mast-high came floating by, 
 As green as emerald. 
 
 * * * 
 
 And the good south luind still blew behind, 
 But no sweet bird did follow, 
 Nor any day for food or play 
 
 Came to the mariner's hollo. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Nor dim nor red, like God's own head, 
 
 The glorious sun uprisft 
 
 Then all averred, I had killed the bird 
 
 That brought the fog and mist. 
 
 • 'Twas right,' said they, * such birds to slay, 
 
 4 That bring the fog and mist.' 
 
 The following poem of Clough's begins with the 
 regular alternate rhyme, but changes to internal rhyme, 
 as the feeling becomes more passionate : 
 
 As ships, becalmed at eve, that /ay 
 
 With ranvas drooping, siafe by side, 
 7wo towers of sai/ at dawn of day 
 
 Are scarce /ong /eagues apart descried; 
 
140 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 Bat O blithe breeze, and O great seas I 
 Though ne'er, that earliest parting past, 
 
 On your wide plain they join again, 
 Together /ead them home at /ast. 
 
 One port, methought, alike they sought, 
 One purpose, hold, where Vr they fare — 
 
 O founding breeze, O rushing seas ! 
 At last, at last, unite them there. 
 
 Campbell, in 'Ye Mariners of England,' employs 
 a ten-line stanza, in which the 7th line has internal 
 rhyme, as 
 
 anap. 2. And sweep through the deep. 
 
 As they roar on the shore. 
 To the fame of your name. 
 
 Perhaps no poet has been more successful in his use of 
 the internal rhyme than Shelley. In The Cloud the 
 internal rhyme is found in all the alternate lines, e.g. 
 
 anap. 4 I .rift the snow on the mountains below, 
 anap. 3 And their great pines ^rown a^ast ; 
 
 And all the night 'tis my pillow white 
 While I sleep in the arms of the blast. 
 
 Swinburne also employs them with fine effect in his 
 anapaestic lines — 
 
 anap. 8 A Dark[ness round | them, as i|ron, bound | fell off | from 
 ra|ces of eld|er name, 
 A Slain | at sight | of her eyes | whose light | bids free|dom 
 light [en and burn | as, flame. 
 
 A Hills I and vall{eys, | where Ajpril rall(ies || his ra|diant 
 
 squad|ron. of flowers | and birds, 
 A Steep I strange beach(es | and lusjtrous reach{es || of 
 
 fluctuant sea | that the land | engirds, 
 A Fields ] and downs | that the sun|rise crowns || with life | 
 
 divijner than lives | in words 1 . 
 
 1 Earlier examples will be found in the Ballad of the Nutbrovvn 
 Maid, and other pieces quoted in Warton's Hist, of Eng. Poetry. 
 
RHYME, STANZA, REFRAIN 141 
 
 It will be observed that in both poems he retains the 
 regular final rhyme, while adding two independent in- 
 ternal rhymes, contrary to the usual practice, as seen for 
 instance in Gray's Bard; where the 15th and 17th lines 
 of each third stanza have internal rhyme, but the regular 
 final rhyme is dropped : 
 
 Above, be/ow, the rose of snow, 
 
 Twin'd with her blushing foe, we spread : 
 
 The bristled boar in infant gore 
 Wallows beneath the thorny shade. 
 
 This rule explains the occasional disappearance of the 
 regular final rhyme in Wordsworth's magnificent, but 
 very irregular ode, as below : 
 
 We will grieve not, rather find a 
 
 Strength in what remains behind ; a 
 
 In the primal sympathy b 
 
 Which having been must ever be ; b 
 
 In the soothing thoughts that spring c 
 
 Out of human suffering ; c 
 
 In the faith that looks through death, x l 
 
 In years that bring the philosophic mind. a 
 
 Before dealing with other positional varieties of rhyme, 
 it is necessary to say something about the Stanza. All 
 verse may be divided into continuous, such as Milton's 
 blank verse, and discontinuous, such as the Hymn on the 
 Nativity, the latter being broken up into metrical sections. 
 Such sections or stanzas may be regular, each having the 
 same number of lines, and each line the same metre as 
 the corresponding line in the other sections; or it may be 
 irregular, varying in metre and in the number of lines. 
 
 In the regular couplet, or two-line stanza, the rhyme 
 is of course consecutive, as in the hymn 
 
 iamb. 5 Peace, perfect peace, in this dark world of sin? 
 The blood of Jesus whispers peace within. 
 
 1 I use x to mark internal rhyme. See, for other examples, note 
 on the Ode, p. 148. 
 
I42 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 and in the later Locksley Hall 
 
 troch. 8 Gone the fires of youth, the follies, furies, curses, passionate 
 tears, 
 Gone like fires and floods and earthquakes of the planet's 
 dawning years, 
 
 and the Higher Pantheism 
 
 anap. 6. A Glory about thee, without thee, and thou fulfillest thy 
 doom, 
 A Making Him broken gleams, and a stifled splendour 
 and gloom. 
 
 So also in the three-line stanza, as in Two Voices 
 
 iamb. 4 A still small voice spake unto me, 
 
 Thou art so full of misery, 
 Were it not better not to be? 
 
 and in the hymn 
 
 troch. 4 Day of wrath, O day of mourning, 
 
 See fulfilled the prophets' warning, 
 Heaven and earth in ashes burning. 
 
 Browning's Rephan is in anapaestic triplets : 
 
 How I lived, 'ere my human life began 
 
 In this world of yours — like you, made man — 
 
 When my home was the star of my god Rephan? 
 
 Couplets and triplets are often followed by a more 
 or less regular refrain, as in 
 
 iamb. 4 My God, my Father, while I stray 
 
 Far from my home on life's rough way, 
 O teach me from my heart to say, 
 
 iamb. 2 Thy will be done. 
 
 There are two variations from the consecutive rhyme 
 of the triplet, (1) Dante's metre, the Terza Rima, em- 
 ployed by Byron in his translation from the fifth Canto 
 of the Inferno. 
 
 'But tell me, in the season of sweet sighs, 
 'By what and how thy love to passion rose, 
 'So as his dim desires to recognize?' 
 
RHYME, STANZA, REFRAIN 1 43 
 
 Then she to me : ' The greatest of all woes 
 
 'Is to remind us of our happy days 
 
 'In misery, and that thy teacher knows.' 
 
 Here the 1st and 3rd lines rhyme, and the 2nd line 
 rhymes with the 1st and 3rd of the following stanza, 
 following the notation aba, bcb, cdc, &c. It is used by 
 Shelley in Prince Athanase, the Ode to the West Wind 
 and the Triumph of Life, and by Browning in Jochanan 
 Hakkadosh, and the Statue and the Bust. 
 
 The second variation follows the scheme aab. The 
 
 following is an example : 
 
 This wayward book — bird with a broken wing — 
 Waif that the winds, among the flakes they fling 
 
 Against all walls, bear to your window pane, 
 This puny. offspring of a troublous time, 
 This babe new-born into a stormy clime, 
 
 To many a stroke of lightning, cold and rain — 
 'Twere well if it had never left my door; 
 See how it halts, and fancied it could soar ! 
 
 Once it did sing, and hear it now complain! 
 
 Sir G. Young, Translations from Victor Hugo. 
 
 In the four-lined stanza the rhyme is commonly 
 either consecutive or alternate ; and in the latter case, 
 the 1 st and 3rd alternate rhymes are often omitted. The 
 alternate rhyme has the advantage of knitting the stanza 
 more firmly together, as in Hood's poem, where the 2nd 
 and 4th lines always rhyme, while the 1st and 3rd rhyme 
 in one verse, are without symphony in two verses, and 
 are united by assonance in the following : 
 
 We watched her breathing thro' the night, 
 
 Her breathing soft and low, 
 As in her breast the wave of life 
 
 Kept heaving to and fro. 
 
 As these lines might be written in two seven-foot 
 lines, it is easy to see why the 1st and 3rd rhymes may 
 
144 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 be omitted, retaining only the 2nd and 4th, which would 
 then be the only final rhymes. 
 
 A rarer kind of rhyme is that used in the In Memo- 
 rtam, where the two inner and the two outer lines are in 
 unison (abb a), as in the first quatrain of the Miltonic 
 sonnet. 
 
 Another arrangement of the rhymes of the quatrain 
 is found in the triplet followed by a refrain as in the 
 instance given above (aaab). Of course there is no 
 necessity for the last line to be a refrain. Compare 
 Campbell's Hohenlinden : 
 
 On Linden, when the sun was low, 
 All bloodless lay the untrodden snow, 
 And dark as winter was the flow 
 Of Iser rolling rapidly. 
 
 Here the first three lines of the stanza rhyme, while 
 the last line rhymes with the last lines of the other stanzas. 
 Another variety is that used by Fitzgerald in Omar 
 Khayyam (a a da): 
 
 Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who 
 Before us passed the door of Darkness through, 
 
 Not one returned to tell us of the- Road, 
 Which to discover we must travel too. 
 
 Another is where all four lines rhyme, as in Clough : 
 
 Green fields of England! wheresoe'er 
 Across this watery waste we fare, 
 Your image at our hearts we bear, / 
 
 Green fields of England, everywhere. 
 
 In the beautiful poem which follows, consisting of 
 eleven lines, there are only two rhymes, one recurring 
 five, the other six times : 
 
 The little hands that never sought 
 Earth's prizes, worthless all as sands, 
 What gift has death, God's servant, brought 
 The little hands? 
 
RHYME, STANZA, REFRAIN 1 45 
 
 We ask ; but love's self silent stands, 
 Love, that lends eyes and wings to thought 
 To search where death's dim heaven expands. 
 
 Ere this, perchance, though love knows nought, 
 Flowers fill them, grown in lovelier lands, 
 Where hands of guiding angels caught 
 The little hands. 
 
 Swinburne's Roundels. 
 
 Browning has forty lines with the same rhyme, often 
 doubled, in his poem Through the Metidja i of which the 
 following is the first stanza : 
 
 As I ride, as I ride, 
 
 With a full heart for my guide, 
 
 So its tide rocks my side, 
 
 As I ride, as I ride, 
 
 That, as I were double-eyed, 
 
 He, in whom our tribes confide, 
 
 Is descried, ways untried 
 
 As I ride, as I ride. 
 
 It would be hopeless to attempt to give an account of 
 all the varieties of stanza which have been built up out of 
 the simpler rhymes that we have had before us. There are 
 perhaps three, which may be thought to have a superior 
 claim to our attention : the Spenserian, of which we spoke 
 in Ch. hi., and those which constitute the Sonnet and 
 the Ode. 
 
 The Sonnet is a five-foot iambic poem of 14 lines \ 
 borrowed from the Italian poets, who divided it into an 
 octave, made up of two quatrains, and a sestet, made 
 up of two tercets. There is usually a pause at the end 
 of each quatrain and tercet. Of all our English poets 
 Milton keeps closest to the original Petrarchian sonnet 
 in respect to rhyme, the law of which {abba, abba) 
 is fixed in the octave, but variable in the sestet, as 
 
 m. 10 
 
146 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 in the following. He is however indifferent to the 
 pause. 
 
 Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones a 
 
 Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold ; b 
 
 Ev'n them who kept thy truth so pure of old, b 
 
 When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones, a 
 
 Forget not ; in thy book record their groans a 
 
 Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold b 
 
 Slain by the bloody Piemontese that roll'd b 
 
 Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans a 
 
 The vales redoubled to the hills, and they c 
 
 To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow d 
 
 O'er all th' Italian fields where still doth sway c 
 
 The triple Tyrant ; that from these may grow d 
 
 A hundred-fold, who having learnt thy way c 
 
 Early may fly the Babylonian woe. d 
 
 The sestet follows the same law (cdc, dcd) in sonnets 22 
 and 28 ; but in that addressed to Fairfax the law is cdd, 
 dec. In both, however, the number of distinct rhymes 
 remains the same, two for the octave and two for the 
 sestet ; or, to express it differently, the same rhyme 
 recurs four times in the octave and three times in the 
 sestet ; while in other sonnets, such as 19 (On his Blind- 
 ness), 20 and 2i, the sestet has three distinct rhymes, in 
 two cases cde, cde, in the third case cdc, eed. 
 
 Shakespeare's sonnet, which is also Spenser's, ap- 
 proaches more nearly to the Italian in its pauses, but is 
 otherwise looser in structure than Milton's, containing 
 three quatrains and a distich, and following the law 
 a dad, eded, efef, gg, thus: 
 
 When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes a 
 
 I all alone beweep my outcast state, b 
 
 And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, a 
 
 And look upon myself and curse my fate ; b 
 
RHYME, STANZA, REFRAIN 1 47 
 
 Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, c 
 
 Featured like him, like him with friends possest, d 
 
 Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, c 
 
 With what I most enjoy contented least ; d 
 
 Yet, in these thoughts myself almost despising, e 
 
 Haply I think on thee — and then my state, f 
 
 Like to a lark at break of day arising e 
 
 From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate ; / 
 
 For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings g 
 
 That then I scorn to change my state with kings. g 
 
 Wordsworth's sonnets are framed mainly on the model 
 of Milton's, but are more regular in their pauses. That 
 on the Extinction of the Venetian Republic supplies 
 a fair sample, with the following scheme of rhymes 
 abba, acca, ded, ede. 
 
 Once did she hold the gorgeous East in fee, a 
 
 And was the safeguard of the West : the worth b 
 
 Of Venice did not fall below her birth, b 
 
 Venice, the eldest child of Liberty. a 
 
 She was a maiden city, bright and free ; a 
 
 No guile seduced, no force could violate ; c 
 
 And when she took unto herself a Mate, c 
 
 % She must espouse the everlasting Sea. a 
 
 And what if she had seen those glories fade, d 
 
 Those titles vanish, and that strength decay, e 
 
 Yet shall some tribute of regret be paid d 
 
 When her long life hath reached its final day : e 
 
 Men we are, and must grieve when even the shade d 
 
 Of that which once was great is passed away. e 
 
 In Westminster Bridge and The World is too much with 
 us Wordsworth is satisfied with four distinct rhymes : 
 in King's College Chapel and others, he uses as many 
 as six. He never, I think, employs a final distich. 
 
 I go on now to the Ode. This properly means 
 a poem intended to be sung to music. It has now, 
 
 IO 2 
 
148 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 I think, come to imply a poem of some length, on 
 a more or less abstract subject, broken up into irregular 
 stanzas. Collins gave the name to his beautiful little 
 poem ' How sleep the brave,' which consists of only two 
 verses, containing six regular four-foot iambic lines ; and 
 so his Ode to Evening consists of thirteen stanzas of four 
 lines, the first two lines containing five, and the last two 
 containing three iambs. On the other hand The Passions 
 is made up of irregular iambic stanzas, varying much in 
 the number both of lines and of feet. We may compare 
 with these different forms of the Ode two of Words- 
 worth's Odes, that to Duty, which consists of 7 regular 
 stanzas made up of 7 four-foot iambic lines, with a con- 
 cluding Alexandrine, the rhymes following the law 
 ababccdd; and on the other hand the irregular Ode on 
 Immortality, consisting of eleven iambic stanzas, of which 
 the scheme is as follows, the first column giving the 
 number of lines, the second the number of feet in each, 
 the third the rhyming order. For clearness' sake I begin 
 by quoting the first stanza. 
 
 a There was | a time | when meadjow, grove j and stream, 
 
 b The earth | and ev|ery comjmon sight, 
 
 a To me | did seem 
 
 b Appar|elled in j celesjtial light ; 
 
 a The glo|ry and | the fresh|ness of | a dream. 
 
 c It is I not now | as it j hath been | of yore : 
 
 d Turn where|soe'er | I may, 
 
 d By night | or day, 
 
 c The things | which I j have seen | I now | can see | no more. 
 
 Stanza 
 
 I. 9 lines I 5.4. 2.4.5.5.3.2.6 I rhymes ababacddc. 
 
 II. 9 ,, I 3 . 3 . 3 .4.-4. 3 . 4. 4.6 I rhymes aabcbcdx 1 d. 
 
 1 x marks the internal rhymes : 
 
 But yet I know, where'er I go, 
 and in stanza IV. » 
 
 I hear, I hear, with joy I hear. 
 
RHYME, STANZA, REFRAIN 1 49 
 
 III, 17 Hnes I +5-3-3-5-5-3-5-5- 5 • 5-3 • ~ W • 3 • 4 - * • 7 I 
 
 rhymes abbccadaadeffeegg. 
 
 IV. 22 „ I 5.4.5-4- 3-5-4 + -3 + - 2 + - 2 + - 2 -4-3-4-4- 
 
 4-5-5-3-3-5-5I rhymes abbaaacddceeff x 
 ggghhii. 
 v - 19 »» I5+.5-3 + -3-4.4-5-3.5.5-3-5.3-5-4-3 
 
 +-3+-5-5 I ababccdde x fefegghhii. 
 VI. 8 „ I 5. 5 -5- 3- 4-5- 4- 5 I abbcddac. 
 VII. 23 „ I 5+-5-5-5 + -5-5-5-5-4-4-3-4- 3-5-3-3- 
 3-5-5-5-5-3 + -3+I abbabcdceecffggchhhii. 
 VIII. 21 „ I 5- 3-5-5-5-5--4- 3-5-5-5- 5-5.5- 5-5- 5- 
 5-5.5-5 I aabcbcddceaeaffgghiih. 
 J X. 39 » I 3 + -3- 3+-3-5- 5- 5-5. 5 • 5 • " 3 • 3 • 4 • 3 • - 4 • 
 -4+-5-5 + -5-3 + -3 + -3-5-5 + -5-5 + -5.-2 
 + .5 + . 2. 5. 5.4 + . 3. 5.2 + . 5. 5 I ababccdc 
 ddeefffghghiikklmlmnnooopqqpprr. 
 
 X. 19 ,, I 5.3.3.-4.-4.-4.-4.5 .5.4.6.-4.-4.-4. 
 
 -4.-4.-4.-4.5 I abbacccddeeffgghhxf. 
 
 XI. 17 », I5-5-5-5-5-5.5.5.2.5-5-5-5-6. 5-5-5 i 
 
 axbbcdccdeffeghgh. 
 
 Intermediate between these two forms of the ode, that 
 which is uniform throughout, and that in which the 
 number of stanzas, lines, and feet vary indefinitely, come 
 such poems as Gray's Bard and Progress of Poesy, in 
 which the number of stanzas is a multiple of three, and 
 all the stanzas correspond with one another, except that 
 every third stanza is longer than the others and comes 
 under a different law of metre. Thus the scheme may 
 be described as a triple repetition of stanzas AAB. In 
 the Bard, A consists of 14 lines, B of 20; in Poesy, A has 
 12 lines, B 17. In the former the number of iambs 
 and the rhyming scheme are as follows : 
 A. -4.4.4.4.-4. 5. 5. 4-5-5- 5-5-5- 6| ababccddefefgg. 
 B - 3-3- 5.3.3. 5-4 --4-5-5-5-5-5-5-4-4-4-4-5-6|a(5 
 cbacdeedfg^xhx^hii. 
 
 1 ' Infancy' is apparently made to rhyme with ' boy' and 'joy.' 
 
 2 The internal rhymes here are 
 
 * No more I weep ; they do not sleeps 
 and ' I see them sit ; they linger yet? 
 
150 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 In the latter 
 
 ^- -4-5-4-5-4-4-5-4-5-4-4-6| abbaccddeeff. 
 
 B\ - 4 . - 4 . - 4 . 4 . 3 . 4 + . - 4 -f . - 4 4- . - 4 . -» 4+ . - 4 . 5 . 5 i 5 . 
 
 5 . 5 . 6 | aabbaccdedefgfghh. 
 
 It may be well perhaps to give a sample of the 
 latter B : 
 
 A Woods | that wave j o'er Deljphi's steep, 
 A Isles | that crown | th' Aege|an deep, 
 A Fields | that cool | Iliss|us laves, 
 Or where | Maean|der's amjber waves, 
 In lingering lab|yrinths creep, 
 How do | your tune|ful echjoes lang(uish, 
 A Mute | but to | the voice | of ang(uish ! 
 A Where | each old | poet|ic moun(tain 
 
 A Injspira|tion breathed | around ; 
 A Ev|ery shade | and halljowed foun(tain 
 
 A Mur|mured deep | a sol|emn sound : 
 Till the | sad Nine | in Greece's ejvil hour 
 
 Left their | Parnass|us for | the La|tian plains. 
 Alike | they scorn | the pomp i of ty|rant Power, 
 
 And cow|ard Vice | that rev|els in | her chains. 
 When Lajtium had | her lof|ty spir|it lost, 
 They sought, | O Al|bion ! next | thy sea|-encirjcled coast. 
 
 Whence did Gray get this metre? The answer is 
 found in Ben Jonson's so-called Pindaric Ode On the 
 Death of Sir H. Morison. Here the triplet AAB receives 
 its classical nomenclature, strophe, antistrophe, epode, and 
 the Ode is made up of a four-fold repetition of these, 
 perhaps in imitation of Pindar's first Olympian. In his 
 note on the passage Waller says that ' if the Greek ode 
 ran out to any length it was always divided into triplets of 
 stanzas, the two first (Strophe and Antistrophe) being con- 
 stantly of the same length and measure,*,nd all the Epodes 
 in like manner corresponding exactly with each other.' 
 
 Dryden's Alexander's Feast is even more irregular 
 than Wordsworth's great ode, as it admits diversity not 
 only in the number of feet, but in the rhythm. Thus he 
 
RHYME, STANZA, REFRAIN 
 
 151 
 
 has a sequence of trochees in the 3rd and 5th stanzas 
 and of anapaests in the 6th stanza. Coleridge has 
 examples of both forms, the regular in France^ which 
 consists of five stanzas each containing 21 iambic lines. 
 The scheme of feet and of rhymes is as follows : except that 
 the third, the middle stanza, closes with an Alexandrine : 
 5 + . 5 . 4 . 4 . 4 + 
 
 5 • 5 • 5 - 5 • 5 + -5 
 
 4 + -6- 5. 5-6-5 -5- 5-5 i 
 a bbacdcdeefgfgh i hkk ik. 
 
 The Departing Year is irregular, containing nine stanzas, 
 
 iambic with the exception of the first four lines of the eighth 
 
 stanza, which are anapaestic. The scheme is as follows : 
 
 I. 12 lines I 5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5--4 + --4 + -5- 6 l abbab 
 
 II. 
 
 III. 
 
 -4 
 
 ccbddee. 
 I-4.-4.-4 + .5 + .4 + .-4.-4.4.4.4.4.5. 
 3 • 3 • 3 • 5 • 5 • 2 . 5 • 5 • 5 • 5 • 6 I aabbcdedeefggf 
 hihkikilmlm. 
 
 I5-5-5-5-3--4-4-5--4--4--4-4--4-4- -4- 
 -4 + . -4.-4 + . 4. -4.-4.-4.4.-4 I aba 
 abccb ddefefdgdgh i h i k k . 
 
 I same as I. 
 
 I3--3-5-3-3-6.-4 + --4--4+-4-4--4-4- 
 5 • 3 • 3 • 3 • 5 • 5 - * • 5 • 5 • 5 • 3 • 6 • 5 - 5 • 3 ! <*0^ 
 ccdedefggf hihk ik i Im Im ik ik. 
 
 I 4 . 4. 4. 4. 4. 4. 4. 4. -4. -4. 4. 4. 4. 5 . 4. -4. 
 
 4 . 4 I aabbcdcdeefgfgghgh. 
 I 4 . 4. 4. -4. 4. -4. -4. 4. -4. 4. 4. 5 I aabbcd 
 
 cd "fgfg- 
 I anaj>. 4.4.4.4. iamb. 5 + -5-5-5 + -5-5-5-5- 
 
 5 . 6 I aabbcddcedeeff. 
 I 3-5-5-5-3-5-4-5-5-5-5-5-5 I abacabdde 
 
 ceff. . 
 
 In the argument to the last Ode Coleridge changes the 
 use of the technical terms, calling the 1st antistrophe 
 by the name of the 2nd strophe, and using the terms 
 1st and 2nd antistrophe instead of 2nd strophe and 
 antistrophe. 
 
 IV. 
 
 12 
 
 V. 
 
 28 
 
 VI. 
 
 18 
 
 VII. 
 
 14 
 
 VIII 
 
 '4 
 
 IX. 
 
 13 
 
152 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 Final Exercises. I. 
 
 Scan the following lines of Webster and Milton, noting 
 any irregularities : 
 
 Bos. Do you not weep? 
 
 Other sins only speak ; murder shrieks out : 
 
 The element of water moistens the earth, 
 
 But blood flies upwards and bedews the heavens. 
 
 Ferd. Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle: she died young. 
 
 Bos. I think not so ; her infelicity 
 
 Seemed to have years too many. 
 
 Ferd. She and I were twins ; 
 
 And should I die this instant I had lived 
 
 Her time to a minute. Duchess of Mdlfi. 
 
 O poor Antonio, though nothing be so needful 
 To thy estate as pity, yet I find 
 Nothing so dangerous. I must look to my footing : 
 . In such slippery ice- pavements men had need 
 To be frost-nailed well, they may break their necks else ; 
 The precedent's here afore me. How this man 
 Bears up in blood, seems fearless ! Why, 'tis well ; 
 Security some men call the suburbs of hell, 
 Only a dead wall between. Duchess of Malfi. 
 
 Besides, how vile, contemptible, ridiculous ; 
 What act more execrably unclean, profane? 
 
 — An impious crew 
 Of men conspiring to uphold their state 
 By worse than hostile deeds, violating the ends 
 For which our country is a name so dear; 
 Not therefore to be obeyed. But zeal moved thee ; 
 To please thy Gods thou didst it. Gods unable 
 To acquit themselves and prosecute their foes 
 But by ungodly deeds, the contradiction 
 Of their own deity, Gods cannot be. 
 
 Chor. As signal now in low dejected state 
 
 As erst in highest, behold him where he lies. 
 
 Man. O miserable change ! is this the man 
 
 That invincible Samson, far renowned? Samson. 
 
RHYME, STANZA, REFRAIN I 53 
 
 Only the importune Tempter still remained, 
 And with these words his temptation pursued. 
 The rest commit to me, I shall let pass 
 
 No advantage, and his strength as oft assay. 
 
 * * » * 
 
 Then to the desert takes with these his flight, 
 
 Where still from shade to shade the Son of God 
 
 After forty days fasting had remained. P. R. 
 
 Illustrate from the passages given below Coleridge's 
 assertion that 'in chastity of diction and the harmony 
 of blank verse, Cowper leaves Thomson immeasurably 
 below him.' 
 
 Through the hushed air the whitening shower descends, 
 
 At first thin-wavering, till at last the flakes 
 
 Fall broad and wide and fast, dimming the day 
 
 With a continual flow. The cherished fields 
 
 Put on their winter robe of purest white : 
 
 'Tis brightness all, save where the new snow melte 
 
 Along the mazy current. Low the woods 
 
 Bow their hoar head ; and ere the languid sun 
 
 Faint from the west emits his evening ray, 
 
 Earth's universal face, deep hid and chill, 
 
 Is one wide dazzling waste, that buries wide 
 
 The works of man. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 — The fowls of heaven, 
 Tamed by the cruel season, crowd around 
 The winnowing store, and claim the little boon 
 Which Providence assigns them. One alone, 
 The red-breast, sacred to the household gods, 
 Wisely regardful of the embroiling sky, 
 In joyless fields and thorny thickets leaves 
 His shivering mates and pays to trusted man 
 His annual visit. Half-afraid, he first 
 Against the window beats ; then brisk alights 
 On the warm hearth ; then hopping o'er the floor, 
 Eyes all the smiling family askance, 
 And pecks and starts, and wonders where he is ; 
 Till more familiar grown, the table crumbs 
 Attract his slender feet. Thomson. 
 
154 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 The night was winter in his roughest mood : 
 
 The morning sharp and clear. But now at noon 
 
 Upon the southern side of the slant hills, 
 
 And where the woods fence oft" the northern blast, 
 
 The season smiles, resigning all its rage, 
 
 And has the warmth of May. The vault is blue 
 
 Without a cloud, and white without a speck 
 
 The dazzling splendour of the scene below. 
 
 * * * * 
 No noise is here, or none that hinders thought. 
 The redbreast warbles still, but is content 
 With slender notes, and more than half suppressed : 
 Pleased with his solitude, and flitting light 
 From spray to spray, where'er he rests he shakes 
 From many a twig the pendant drops of ice, 
 That tinkle in the withered leaves below. 
 Stillness, accompanied with sounds so soft, 
 Charms more than silence. Meditation here 
 May think down hours to moments. Here the heart 
 May give a useful lesson to the head, 
 And Learning wiser grow without his books. 
 
 Cowper. 
 
 Point out the metrical faults where the following heroic 
 lines are incorrectly printed, and make suggestions as to 
 the true reading : 
 
 Jael, who with hospitable guile. 
 With the love juice as I bid thee do. 
 So by former lecture and advice. 
 
 Chillon ! thy prison is a holy place, 
 Thy sad floor an altar, for 'twas trod 
 Until his very footsteps have left a trace 
 Worn, as thy cold pavement were a sod, 
 By Bonnivard ! may none those marks efface ! 
 They appeal from tyranny to God. 
 
RHYME, STANZA, REFRAIN 155 
 
 Final Exercises. II. 
 
 Scan the following, pointing out any peculiarities of 
 metre or rhyme : 
 
 This is a spray the Bird clung to, 
 
 Making it blossom with pleasure. 
 Ere the hiyh tree-top she sprung to, 
 Fit for her nest and her treasure. 
 O, what a hope beyond measure 
 Was the poor spray's, which the Hying feet hung to — 
 So to be singled out, built in, and sung to ! 
 Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her, 
 
 Fold our hands round her knees and cling? 
 O that man's heart were as fire and could spring to her, 
 
 Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring ! 
 For the stars and the winds 'are unto her 
 As raiment, as songs of the harp-player ; 
 For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her, 
 And the southwest-wind and the west-wind sing. 
 
 Swinburne, Atalanta. 
 When by Zeus relenting the mandate was revoked, 
 
 Sentencing to exile the bright Sun-God, 
 Mindful were the ploughmen of who the steer had yoked, 
 
 Who : and what a track showed the upturned sod ! 
 Mindful were the shepherds, as now the noon severe 
 
 Bent a burning eye-brow to brown eve-tide, 
 How the rustic flute drew the silver to the sphere, 
 Sister of his own till her rays fell wide. 
 God ! of whom music 
 And song and blood are pure, 
 The day is never darkened 
 
 That had thee here obscure. G. Merkdith. 
 
 There's a whisper down the field where the year has shot her yield 
 
 And the ricks stand gray to the sun, 
 Singing: — ' Over then, come over, for the bee has quit the clover 
 And your English summer's done.' 
 
 You have heard the beat of the off-shore wind 
 And the thresh of the deep-sea rain ; 
 You have heard the song — how long ! how long ! 
 Pull out on the trail again ! 
 
156 MODERN ENGLISH METRE 
 
 Ha' done with the Tents of Shem, dear lass, 
 We've seen the seasons through, 
 
 And it's time to turn on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail, 
 Pull out, pull out, on the Long Trail— the trail that is always new. 
 
 Rudyard Kipling. 
 
 Final Exercises. III. 
 
 Turn into blank verse the Prayer of Darius from 
 Plutarch : 
 
 " Gods of my family and kingdom, if it be possible, I beseech 
 you to restore the declining affairs of Persia, that I may leave them 
 in as flourishing a condition as I found them, and have it in my 
 power to make a grateful return to Alexander for the kindness 
 which in my adversity he has shown to those who are dearest to 
 me. But if indeed the fatal time be come, if our ruin be a debt that 
 must be paid to the divine jealousy and the vicissitudes of things, 
 then I beseech you grant that no other man but Alexander may sit 
 upon the throne of Cyrus." 
 
 Paraphrase in the manner of Pope's Essay on Man 
 the following passage from La Rochefoucauld on self- 
 love : 
 
 Nous sommes si preoccupes en ndtre faveur que souvent ce que 
 nous prenons pour des vertus ne "sont que des vices qui leur ressem- 
 blent, et que l'amour-propre nous deguise. Par exemple : qu'est-ce 
 qui fait appeler la prodigalite, liberalite ; l'avarice, economie ; la 
 cruaute, grandeur d'ame ; l'ambition, emulation ; et ainsi des autres 
 vices habilles en vertus, si non, de la part des autres, la flatterie ; 
 et de la notre un aveugle amour-propre ? 
 
 A paraphrase of the 137th Psalm ('By the waters of 
 Babylon ') in rhyming stanzas. 
 
 The new Shakespeare-Bacon monster described after 
 the manner of Dryden. 
 
 A sonnet on the subject of General Gordon. 
 
 A poem on the death of the Prince Imperial. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 accent (stress), how distributed 
 among the syllables of a single 
 word ; denoted by symbols, 
 i ; English tendency to throw 
 back the accent, 2 ; regular 
 recurrence of, constitutes Eng- 
 lish verse, 1 ; illustrated from 
 
 . Bacon and Scott, 2; may be 
 changed by emphasis, 2 ; rising 
 and falling, 4; see inversion, 
 omission, doubling 
 
 Aeschylus, refrain in, 135 
 
 aesthetic quality of metres, 87- 
 93 ; use of metrical variation, 
 
 94-123 
 
 alcaics, 82 
 
 alexandrine, II, 26-29 
 
 alliteration in l^atin, 124, 125; 
 in old English verse, 127, 128; 
 in modern English, 101-104, 
 106-119 
 
 amphibrach, or anapaest, 20, 21, 
 5*> 52 
 
 anacrusis, 20, 36, 38, 39 ; inter- 
 nal, 72 
 
 anapaest, 5; for iamb, 13-15 
 
 anapaestic metres, 44-57; rhyme- 
 less, 53 ; with double rhymes, 
 54, 55 ; substitution, iamb for 
 anapaest, 44 f., cretic for ana- 
 paest, 74, 75, monosyllable 
 for anapaest, 44 f. 
 
 anti-jacobin burlesques, 83, 99 
 
 Arnold, M., quoted, 40, 53, 57, 
 61, 91 
 
 Ascham, Roger, on rhyme, 129 
 
 asclepiad imitated by Swinburne, 
 
 83 
 assonance, 96, 138 
 
 ballads, roughness of the old, 85, 
 
 86 
 Baring-Gould, 33, 38, 84 
 Beaumont, Sir J., 130 
 blank verse introduced by Surrey, 
 
 128, see rhyme 
 Bo wen, Lord, 80 
 Bridges, R., quoted, 78 
 Browning quoted, 6, 14, 27, 51, 
 
 64, 81, 142, 145 
 Burns, 32, 137 
 Byron, 30, 56, 132, 142 
 
 caesura, feminine, 20-22 ; in 
 
 hexameter, 79, 80 
 Campbell, 73 f. (Ode to Nelson), 
 
 140, 144 
 Campion quoted, 138 
 Catullus, 135 
 Chapman, 29 
 Chaucer, 15; quoted, 22; on 
 
 rhyme and metre, 127 ; his 
 
 irregular rhymes, 134 
 Cicero on Ennius, 125 
 classical metres, 79-84 
 Clough, 80, 81, 139, 144 
 Coleridge, 30, 44, 79; quoted, 
 
 5, 14, 19, 25, 46, 52, 66, 80, 
 
 153; uses internal rhyme, 1 39 ; 
 
 odes, 151 
 consonants classified, 96 
 Courthope, Hist, of Eng. Poetry, 
 
 127, 130 
 Cowper quoted, 5, 24, 46, 117, 
 
 118, 154 
 cretic for anapaest, 74, 75 
 
 Dabney quoted, 87, 88, 92 
 
i 5 8 
 
 INDEX 
 
 dactyl, 5; for iamb, 16; for 
 
 trochee, 36 f. , 70, 7 1 
 dactylic metres, 44, 45, 49, 58- 
 
 62 ; substitution, trochee for 
 
 dactyl, 57 f., monosyllable 
 
 for dactyl, 58 f. 
 Darley, 18, 19, 61 
 Denham quoted, 133 
 doubling of stress, see spondee 
 Drayton, 27, 33, 63 
 Dryden quoted, 23, 28, 56 ; 
 
 on rhyme, 130, 131 
 
 elegiacs, 80; irregular 81 
 
 Eliot, G., 138 
 
 elision, 16, 17 
 
 emendation, exercises on, 154 f. 
 
 emphasis, how it affects stress, 3 
 
 ending, weak, 9; see feminine 
 
 enjambement in Shakespeare, 9, 
 98; in Shelley, 99; line ending 
 in the middle of a word, 99 ; 
 aesthetic use of, 100 
 
 Ennius, rhyme in, 125 
 
 exercises on ch. I, to deter- 
 mine the metres, 5 ; on II, to 
 point out irregularities in heroic 
 verse, 23; III, to scan other 
 specimens of iambic verse, 34; 
 IV, to scan specimens of tro- 
 chaic, 42; V, to scan speci- 
 mens of anapaestic, 56; VI, 
 to scan specimens of dactylic, 
 63 ; VII, on mixed and doubt- 
 ful metres, 78 ; VIII, on 
 classical metres, 84 ; X, to 
 point out the connexion of 
 sound and sense in certain 
 select passages, 122; XI, Final 
 Exercises, 152-157 
 
 feminine ending, 1 8 ; use by 
 Fletcher and Shakespeare, 18, 
 19; in Hamlet, 94-98; with 
 two or more extra syllables, 
 19 ; within the line, 20, 76, 
 77; in anapaestic verse, 44- 
 46, 48, 50, 52-55 
 
 Fitzgerald, 144 
 
 Fletcher quoted, 18, 19; his 
 Maid's Tragedy rewritten by 
 Waller, 130 
 
 foot, meaning of the term, 4 
 
 Gosse {Lectures), 130 
 
 Gray, r 4 i, 149, i 5 o; elegy no, 
 
 in 
 Greene, 43 
 Griffin, G., 64 
 
 Hadrian, his use of rhyme, 125 
 
 hendecasyllables, 81, 82 
 
 Herbert, G., 37 
 
 Herrick, 34, 79 
 
 hexameter, 79, 80 ; truncated 
 
 of Bowen and Browning, 80, 
 
 81 
 Hood quoted, 5, 59, 131, 
 
 H3 
 
 Horace, rhyme in, 125 
 Hudibras, 132 
 
 hyper-metrical syllables, law of, 
 19 
 
 iamb, 4 ; for trochee, 37, 39 ; 
 for anapaest, 44, 46 f. 
 
 iambic metres, five-foot iambic, 
 7-25 ; six-foot, see Alexan- 
 drine; seven-foot, 29; four- foot, 
 30-32; three-foot, 33; two-foot, 
 32; one-foot, 33; substitution, 
 trochee for iamb, 10, 11, 
 pyrrhic for iamb, 12, spondee 
 for iamb, 12, 13, anapaest for 
 iamb, 13-15, dactyl or tribrach 
 for iamb, 16, long syllable for 
 iamb, see truncation; sequence, 
 iamb — trochee, 10; double tro- 
 chee, n, 12 
 
 imitation of sense by sound, see 
 onomatopoeia 
 
 inversion of stress, trochee for ' 
 iamb, 10-12 ; iamb for trochee, 
 37-39 
 
 Jonson, Ben, quoted, 6, 45, 99; 
 his Pindaric ode, 150 
 
INDEX 
 
 159 
 
 Keats, 131 
 
 Keble, 33 
 
 Kingsley, 79; quoted, 43, 58, 
 
 84, 118, 119 
 Kipling, Rudyard, 4a, 43, 156 
 
 ' laboratory,' pronunciation of, 
 
 2 n. 
 Lamb, C. (Old Familiar Faces), 
 
 70, 71 
 Latin, rhyme and alliteration, 
 
 125, 126; accentual verse, 126 
 Lucretius, alliteration in, 125 
 
 Mapes' drinking song, 126 
 
 Marlowe quoted, 12, 16, 19, 
 22, 23, 30, 128 
 
 Meredith, G., 60, 61, 155 
 
 metre determined by rhythm 
 and by the number of the feet, 
 4; mixed, 65-78 ; changed, in 
 Maud, 67; Vision of Sin, 68 ; 
 Lotos- Faters, 68; Wellington, 
 69; Revenge, 71-7^; Shelley, 
 70 ; Lamb, 70, 71; classical, 
 79-84 ; development of, from 
 1066 to 1561, 127 f. ; doubt- 
 ful, 48, 50-53, 62, 70-77 ; 
 aesthetic qualities of different 
 metres, 87-93 
 
 Milton quoted, 7-1 1, 13, 14, 
 16-18, 20, 27, 31, 32, 35, 
 l<\ 42, 65, 99, 122, 123, 
 129, 131; (metrical analysis), 
 100-110 
 
 monosyllabic foot, 45, 49, 119; 
 see truncation 
 
 4 moon's ' or ' moones' in M.N.D., 
 66 
 
 Moore, T., 34 
 
 Morris, W., quoted, 1 r 
 
 Murray, G., difficult metres, 75 
 -77 
 
 notation, in., 9 n., 26 n. 
 
 ode, regular and irregular, 148; 
 of Collins, 148; Wordsworth, 
 148 f . ; Gray, 149 f. ; Ben 
 
 Jonson, 150; Campbell, 73- 
 75, 1 40; Dryden, 150 f . ; 
 Coleridge, 151 
 
 omission of stress, see pyrrhic 
 and tribrach 
 
 onomatopoeia, 102-119; exces- 
 sive, 120, 121 
 
 Ovid uses rhyme, 125 
 
 pause, in the middle or at the 
 end of a foot, 8 ; final or in- 
 ternal in the line, 8, 9 ; 
 aesthetic use of, 100, 118 
 
 pentameter, see elegiacs 
 
 Percy's Reliqiies, 45 
 
 Piers Plowman, 128 
 
 Pope, quotations from, 5, 8, 9, 
 10, 12, 13, 15, 18, 24, 28, 
 
 "7. l$*i 133 
 
 prose, how distinguished from 
 
 verse, r 
 pyrrhic for iamb, 12 
 
 Raleigh, 30 
 
 refrain, history of, 135; varieties 
 of, 136 
 
 rhyme, monosyllabic, 124; 'per- 
 fect' illegitimate in English, 
 but practised by some poets, 
 134 f. ; Latin rhyming verse, 
 ancient, 124, 125; mediaeval, 
 125 f . ; ousted alliteration, 
 127 ; depreciated by Mar- 
 lowe, Ascham, B. Jonson, 
 Milton, 128, 129 ; became 
 fashionable again in the 17th 
 and 1 8th centuries, 130 ; di- 
 syllabic and polysyllabic, 131, 
 132; loose, 132 f . ; witnesses 
 to change of pronunciation, 
 132; Shelley's negligent, 135, 
 
 137 f. ; leonine or internal, 
 
 138 f.; rhyming couplet, 141, 
 142; triplet, 142 f.; quartette, 
 143 f. ; multiplex rhyme, 144, 
 
 145 
 
 rhythm, rising and falling, 4 
 
 sapphics, 83 
 
6o 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Scott quoted, 4, 5, 30, 34, 45, 
 46, 49, 58, 59, 65, 89, 139 
 
 Shakespeare, change of metre, 
 66 ; uses old English genitive, 
 99 ; unstopped lines, 9, 98 ; 
 inversion of stress, 10, 11 ; 
 spondee, 12, 13; anapaest, 
 13-15, 21 j marks' of elision, 
 17; feminine ending, 19, 94 
 -97 ; feminine caesura, 20-22 ; 
 truncation initial and internal, 
 22, 23; Alexandrine, 29; 
 quoted, 42, 45, 66, 78, 122, 
 136 
 
 Shelley quoted, 10-16, 19, 21, 
 3°> 3i> 3 2 > 35> 37-39' 4°"> 
 *33» r 34>.i37, 138, 140. 143 
 
 slurring distinguished from eli- 
 sion, 17; in Milton, 17; in 
 Fletcher, 19 ; in Scott, 49 ; in 
 ballads, 86; in Meredith, 61 
 
 sonnet, Petrarchian, 145 ; of 
 Milton, 146; of Shakespeare, 
 146 f . ; of Wordsworth, 147 
 
 sound, qualities of, 96 
 
 Southey, 52, 53, 63 
 
 Spenser, 11, 27, 28, 33, 56, 
 
 . 66 n„ 134, 135 
 
 spondee for iamb, 12, 13 
 
 stanza, 141 f. 
 
 Steevens, 66 n. 
 
 Suckling, 43 
 
 Surrey, 11, 13, 29, 66 n. 
 
 Swinburne quoted, 15, 41, 44, 
 53-55, 83, 121, 140, 144, 
 155 
 
 syllable defective, see truncation ; 
 superfluous at the beginning 
 of the line, see anacrusis; at 
 the end, see feminine ending ; 
 within the line, see slurring, 
 feminine caesura, anacrusis in- 
 ternal 
 
 Tennyson, 5, 8, 11, 12, 14, 15, 
 16, 19, 21, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 
 
 40-43, 47-51, 56, 59, 60, 62 
 (Boadicea), 63, 67 (Mattd), 68 
 ( Vision of Sin), 69 ( Welling- 
 ton), 71 f. (Revenge), 77, 82, 
 123, 136, 142 
 
 Terza Rima, 142 
 
 Thomson quoted, 153 f. 
 
 tribrach for iamb, 16 
 
 trochaic metres, 36-43 ; substi- 
 tution of iamb for trochee, 
 39; of dactyl for trochee, 39 
 -42 ; see anacrusis, truncation 
 
 trochee for iamb, 10-12 ; for 
 dactyl, 58; for spondee, 79 
 
 truncation, 20; initial in five- 
 foot iambic, 22; in four-foot, 
 30, 31 ; three-foot, 32 ; in 
 anapaestic, 44, 46-50, 53, 
 55; internal, 23, 32, 33, 34, 
 42, 45, 49, 50; final m tro- 
 chaic metres, 34-42 ; in dac- 
 tylic, 58-62 
 
 Tusser, 45 
 
 type, variations of, 7, 8 f. 
 
 unstopped lines, 9; see enjambe- 
 ment 
 
 variation, metrical, how pro- 
 duced, 85, 100 f. 
 
 verbal stress, 1-3 
 
 verse, how distinguished from 
 prose, 1 
 
 Virgil, rhyme in, 125 
 
 vowels, long, their metrical 
 effect, 102, [03, no, in, 
 119 ; see sound 
 
 Waller, champion of correct 
 
 rhyming verse, 130 
 Webster, 152 
 Wordsworth, 25 ; ode, 134, 141, 
 
 148, 149; sonnet, 147; loose 
 
 rhymes, 133 
 
 Young, Sir G., quoted, 57, 143 
 
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