In English poetry the foot, rather than the syllable, is the unit. The
number of feet to a verse is fixed, but the number of syllables varies.
In Spanish poetry the number of syllables to a verse is fixed, subject
only to the laws of syllable-counting given above. But if in this
respect the Spanish poet has less freedom than the English versifier, he
has infinitely greater liberty in the arrangement of his rhythms. The
sing-song monotony of regularly recurring beats is intolerable to Latin
ears. The greater flexibility of Spanish rhythm can best be shown by
illustrations:
The Assy'rian came do'wn like the wo'lf on the fo'ld,
And his co'horts were gle'aming in pu'rple and go'ld;
And the she'en of their spe'ars was like sta'rs on the se'a,
When the blu'e wave rolls ni'ghtly on de'ep Galile'e.
Having chosen to write this poem in the anapestic tetrameter, Byron
never varies the rhythm except to substitute an occasional iambic at the
beginning of a verse:
And the're lay the ste'ed with his no'stril all wi'de.
Notice how much more freely Espronceda handles this meter in Spanish:
Su fo'rma galla'rda dibu'ja en las so'mbras
El bla'nco ropaj'e que ondea'nte se ve',
Y cua'l si pisa'ra mulli'das alfo'mbras,
Deslí'zase le've sin rui'do su pie'.
Tal vi'mos al ra'yo de la lu'na lle'na
Fugiti'va ve'la de le'jos cruza'r
Que ya' la' hinche en po'pa la bri'sa sere'na,
Que ya' la confu'nde la espu'ma del ma'r.
The first of these stanzas has the true Byronic swing. But note how
freely the rhythm is handled in the second. Spanish rhythm is so
flexible and free that little practical advantage is gained by counting
feet. We distinguish only two sorts of verse-measure, the binary, where
in general there is stress on one syllable out of two--that is there
are trochees (__' __) or iambics (__ __') in the verse, or the two
intermingled--and second the ternary measure, where one of a group of
three syllables receives the stress. Such a verse is made up of dactyls
(__' __ __), anapests (__ __ __'), or amphibrachs (__ __' __), or some
combination of these. Of course, a three-syllable foot is often found in
binary verse, and, _vice versa_ a two-syllable foot in ternary measure.
By binary verse we mean only a form of verse in which the twofold
measure predominates, and by ternary one in which the threefold measure
predominates. The extract last quoted is an example of ternary verse.
The following will serve as a specimen of the binary movement:
En de'rredo'r de u'na me'sa
Ha'sta se'is ho'mbres está'n,
Fi'ja la vi'sta' en los na'ipes,
Mie'ntras jue'gan a'l para'r;
Every word in Spanish has its individual word-accent: _habí'a,
habla'do_. Now if we join these two words in a phrase, _habí'a
habla'do_, we note that while each of the words still retains its
individual word-accent, _hablado_ is more strongly stressed than
_había_. In addition to its word-accent _hablado_ bears what we term
a phrase-accent. In any line of verse some of the word-stresses are
stronger than others, and these stronger stresses are termed rhythmic
stresses. They correspond to the phrase-stresses of prose. The principal
rhythmic stress is the last stress of the line. In general the rhythmic
stress must coincide with a word-stress. It always does except where
stress-shift comes into play. We have already seen that a stress-shift
coinciding with the rhythmic stress is intolerable, and hiatus is
preferred. It is very unharmonious for two stresses to fall together at
the end of a verse: