English verse is commonly measured by feet, a determinate number of
which go to form a verse or line. The foot is determined by the distance
from one accented syllable to another in the regular scheme of the
metre. The usual metrical feet are either dissyllabic or trisyllabic.
The dissyllabic foot is commonly called an _iambus_ (or _iamb_) if the
unaccented syllable precedes the accented, and a _trochee_ if the
accented precedes the unaccented. The trisyllabic foot is commonly
called an _anapest_ if the two unaccented syllables precede the accented
syllable, and a _dactyl_ if they follow the accented syllable.[6] It
will be observed that the fundamental rhythm of both iambic and trochaic
verse is the same, as is also that of both anapestic and dactylic verse;
the distinction belonging only to the metre as measured into regular
lines. Iambic and anapestic verse (in which the light syllables commonly
open the verse) are sometimes called "ascending rhythm"; trochaic and
dactylic verse (in which the accented syllables commonly open the
verse) "descending rhythm." Ascending rhythm is very greatly in
predominance in English poetry.
The normal verse of any poem is therefore described by indicating the
name of the foot and the number of feet in the verse. The number of feet
is always indicated by the number of stresses or principal accents in
the normal verse. As the light or unaccented syllables may vary from the
typical number, it may also be necessary to indicate that the line is
longer than its name would imply, by reason of Feminine Ending (a light
syllable added at the end) or Anacrusis (a light syllable prefixed); or
that it is shorter than its name would indicate by reason of Catalexis
or Truncation (the light syllable at the end--or less frequently at the
beginning--being omitted).
In like manner, any particular verse or line is fully described by
indicating: (1) the typical foot; (2) the number of feet; (3) the place
of the cesura; (4) the presence or absence of a final pause
("end-stopped" or "run-on"); (5) the presence of such irregularities as
(_a_) Anacrusis or feminine ending,
(_b_) Catalexis (or truncation),
(_c_) Substitution of exceptional feet for the typical foot,
(_d_) Pauses other than the cesural.
_One-stress iambic_.
Thus I
Pass by
And die
As one
Unknown
And gone.
(HERRICK: _Upon his Departure Hence_. 1648.)
(In combination with two-stress and three-stress:)
No more I'll vaunt,
For now I see
Thou only hast the power
To find
And bind
A heart that's free,
And slave it in an hour.
(HERRICK: _His Recantation._ 1648.)
_Two-stress iambic_.
Most good, most fair,
Or things as rare
To call you 's lost;
For all the cost
Words can bestow
So poorly show,...
(DRAYTON: _Amouret Anacreontic._ ab. 1600.)
Because I do
Begin to woo,
Sweet singing Lark,
Be thou the clerk,
And know thy when
To say Amen.
(HERRICK: _To the Lark._ 1648.)
The raging rocks,
And shivering shocks,
Shall break the locks
Of prison-gates;
And Phibbus' car
Shall shine from far,
And make and mar
The foolish Fates.
(SHAKSPERE: Bottom's song in _Midsummer Night's Dream_, I. ii. ab.
1595.)
(In combination with three-stress:)
Only a little more
I have to write;
Then I'll give o'er,
And bid the world good-night.
'Tis but a flying minute
That I must stay,
Or linger in it;
And then I must away.
(HERRICK: _His Poetry his Pillar._ 1648.)
In the second stanza we have the same measure with feminine ending.
(In combination with four-stress:)
Thus let me live, unseen, unknown,
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.
(POPE: _Ode on Solitude._ ab. 1700.)
_Two-stress trochaic_.
Could I catch that
Nimble traitor,
Scornful Laura,
Swift-foot Laura,
Soon then would I
Seek avengement.
(CAMPION: Anacreontics, in _Observations in the Art of English Poesie_.
1602.)
(In combination with four-stress:)
Dust that covers
Long dead lovers
Song blows off with breath that brightens;
At its flashes
Their white ashes
Burst in bloom that lives and lightens.
(SWINBURNE: _Song in Season._)
(Catalectic, and in combination with three-stress:)
Summer's crest
Red-gold tressed,
Corn-flowers peeping under;--
Idle noons,
Lingering moons,
Sudden cloud,
Lightning's shroud,
Sudden rain,
Quick again
Smiles where late was thunder.
(GEORGE ELIOT: Song from _The Spanish Gypsy_, Bk. i. 1868.)
The trochaic measures in _The Spanish Gypsy_ are in imitation of the
similar forms in Spanish poetry. See p. 114, below.
_Two-stress anapestic._
(In combination with three-stress:)
Like a gloomy stain
On the emerald main
Alpheus rushed behind,--
As an eagle pursuing
A dove to its ruin
Down the streams of the cloudy wind.
(SHELLEY: _Arethusa._ 1820.)
(With feminine ending:)
He is gone on the mountain,
He is lost to the forest,
Like a summer-dried fountain,
When our need was the sorest.
The font, reappearing,
From the raindrops shall borrow,
But to us comes no cheering,
To Duncan no morrow!
(SCOTT: Coronach, from _The Lady of the Lake_, Canto 3. 1810.)
(In combination with four-stress:)
Fear death?--to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face.
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
I am nearing the place,
The power of the night, the press of the storm,
The post of the foe;
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
Yet the strong man must go.
(BROWNING: _Prospice._ 1864.)
These specimens, as is usual in anapestic verse, show considerable
freedom in the treatment of the part of the foot containing the light
syllables, substituted iambi being very common. Note the iambi in the
Shelley stanza, line 1, second foot, and line 5, first foot. In the
latter case, however, the first light syllable of line 5 is really
supplied by the syllable added to make the feminine ending of line 4. In
like manner, in the Scott stanza, the first syllable of line 8 is really
supplied by the _-ing_ of line 7; and where we have both feminine ending
(in line 1) and a full anapest following, the effect is that of a
hypermetrical syllable which must be hurried over in the reading. In the
specimen from Browning we find an iambus in the opening foot in lines 2
and 6 (also, of course, in lines 1 and 5).
_Two-stress dactylic._
One more Unfortunate,
Weary of breath,
Rashly importunate,
Gone to her death!
Take her up tenderly,
Lift her with care;
Fashioned so slenderly,
Young, and so fair!
(THOMAS HOOD: _The Bridge of Sighs._ ab. 1830.)
Here the alternate lines are catalectic, both light syllables being
wanting.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.
(TENNYSON: _Charge of the Light Brigade._ 1854.)
Here the fourth and ninth lines are catalectic.
Loudly the sailors cheered
Svend of the Forked Beard,
As with his fleet he steered
Southward to Vendland;
Where with their courses hauled
All were together called,
Under the Isle of Svald
Near to the mainland.
(LONGFELLOW: _Saga of King Olaf_, xvii. 1863.)
In the reading of these stanzas from Tennyson and Longfellow there is so
marked a stress on the final syllable as to make the second dactyl
(except in the opening lines of the Tennyson stanza) more like a Cretic
(in the classical terminology); _i.e._ a foot made up of two heavy
syllables with a light syllable between them. But no such foot is
generally recognized in English verse.
_Two-stress irregular._
On the ground
Sleep sound:
I'll apply
To your eye,
Gentle lover, remedy.
When thou wak'st,
Thou tak'st
True delight
In the sight
Of thy former lady's eye.
(SHAKSPERE: Puck's Song in _Midsummer Night's Dream_, III. ii. ab.
1595.)
What I hate,
Be consecrate
To celebrate
Thee and Thy state,
No mate
For Thee;
What see
For envy
In poor me?
(BROWNING: Song in _Caliban upon Setebos_. 1864.)
In the usual printing of _Caliban upon Setebos_ this song is brought
into the form of the five-accent lines. It is evidently intended,
however, to be read in two-accent groups. Professor Moulton has remarked
interestingly that Browning gives the unique figure of Caliban not only
a grammar but a prosody of his own.
Though my rime be ragged,
Tattered and jagged,
Rudely raine-beaten,
Rusty and moth-eaten;
If ye take wel therewith,
It hath in it some pith.
(JOHN SKELTON: _Colyn Cloute_. ab. 1510.)
This is a specimen of what Mr. Churton Collins calls "that headlong
voluble breathless doggrel which, rattling and clashing on through
quick-recurring rhymes, ... has taken from the name of its author the
title of Skeltonical verse." (Ward's _English Poets_, vol. i. p. 185.)
The number of accents, as well as the number of syllables, is irregular,
being quite as often (perhaps more often) three as two.
_Three-stress iambic._
O let the solid ground
Not fail beneath my feet
Before my life has found
What some have found so sweet;
Then let come what come may,
What matter if I go mad,
I shall have had my day.
(TENNYSON: Song in _Maud_, xi. 1855.)
(In combination with verse of four, five, and six stresses:)
The Oracles are dumb;
No voice or hideous hum
Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving.
Apollo from his shrine
Can no more divine,
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving:
No nightly trance or breathed spell
Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.
(MILTON: _Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity_. 1629.)
Here, in line 5, we have an instance of a verse truncated at the
beginning,--rare in modern English poetry.
(With feminine ending:)
The mountain sheep are sweeter,
But the valley sheep are fatter;
We therefore deemed it meeter
To carry off the latter.
We made an expedition;
We met an host and quelled it;
We forced a strong position,
And killed the men who held it.
(THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK: War Song of Dinas Vawr, from _The Misfortunes of
Elphin_. 1829.)
In line 2 is an instance of anacrusis.
_Three-stress trochaic._
(In combination with iambic:)
Go where glory waits thee,
But, while fame elates thee,
Oh! still remember me.
When the praise thou meetest
To thine ear is sweetest,
Oh! then remember me.
(THOMAS MOORE: _Go Where Glory Waits Thee_. ab. 1820.)
(In combination with six-stress verses:)
Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest,
Like a cloud of fire
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
(SHELLEY: _To a Skylark_. 1820.)
Here lines 2 and 4 are catalectic.
_Three-stress anapestic._
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.
(COWPER: _Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk._ 1782.)
In this specimen lines 2, 5, 6, and 8 show initial truncation, the first
light syllable being missing.
(With two-stress verse:)
His desire is a dureless content,
And a trustless joy;
He is won with a world of despair
And is lost with a toy....
But true love is a durable fire,
In the mind ever burning,
Never sick, never old, never dead,
From itself never turning.
(SIR WALTER RALEIGH (?): _Pilgrim to Pilgrim_. In MS. Rawl. 85; in
Schelling's _Elizabethan Lyrics_, p. 3.)
"The metres of the earlier years of Elizabeth's reign are so
overwhelmingly iambic," Professor Schelling observes, "that this
perfectly metrical, if somewhat irregular, anapæstic movement comes
like a surprise. Professor Gummere, of Haverford College, calls my
attention to three epigrams--printed among the poems of Raleigh,
ed. Hannah, p. 55--all of them in more or less limping anapæsts,
but not of this measure. It is quite possible that the time to
which these verses were sung may have affected the measure." (Notes
to _Elizabethan Lyrics_, pp. 211, 212.)
(With initial truncation:)
She gazed, as I slowly withdrew,
My path I could hardly discern;
So sweetly she bade me adieu,
I thought that she bade me return.
(SHENSTONE: _Pastoral Ballad._ 1743.)
Mr. Saintsbury praises highly the anapests of Shenstone (Ward's _English
Poets_, vol. iii. p. 272), saying that he "taught the metre to a greater
poet than himself, Cowper, and these two between them have written
almost everything that is worth reading in it, if we put avowed parody
and burlesque out of the question." But this is probably to be regarded
as overstating the case.
(With feminine ending:)
If you go over desert and mountain,
Far into the country of sorrow,
To-day and to-night and to-morrow,
And maybe for months and for years;
You shall come, with a heart that is bursting
For trouble and toiling and thirsting,
You shall certainly come to the fountain
At length,--to the Fountain of Tears.
(ARTHUR O'SHAUGHNESSY: _The Fountain of Tears._ 1870.)
Here the extra light syllable at the end of the line is really the
initial light syllable of the following line, as in the specimen on p.
29, above.
So this is a psalm of the waters,--
The wavering, wandering waters:
With languages learned in the forest,
With secrets of earth's lonely caverns,
The mystical waters go by me
On errands of love and of beauty,
On embassies friendly and gentle,
With shimmer of brown and of silver.
(S. WEIR MITCHELL: _A Psalm of the Waters._ 1890.)
Here, also, the final light syllable might be said to take the place of
the missing initial syllable; but the structure of the verse, with the
fact that the initial anapest is always truncated and that the final
syllable is never accented, indicates that the verse as it stands is the
norm of the poem--three-stress anapestic, with initial truncation and
feminine ending.
_Three-stress dactylic._
(Catalectic:)
This is a spray the Bird clung to,
Making it blossom with pleasure,
Ere the high tree-top she sprung to,
Fit for her nest and her treasure.
(BROWNING: _Misconceptions_. 1855.)
_Four-stress iambic._
(For specimens, see Part Two.)
_Four-stress trochaic._
Maiden, crowned with glossy blackness,
Lithe as panther forest-roaming,
Long-armed naiad, when she dances,
On a stream of ether floating.
(GEORGE ELIOT: Song from _The Spanish Gypsy_, Book i. 1868.)
Westward, westward Hiawatha
Sailed into the fiery sunset,
Sailed into the purple vapors,
Sailed into the dusk of evening.
(LONGFELLOW: _Hiawatha_. 1855.)
Honour, riches, marriage-blessing,
Long continuance, and increasing,
Hourly joys be still upon you!
Juno sings her blessings on you.
(SHAKSPERE: Juno's Song in _The Tempest_, IV. i. ab. 1610.)
(Catalectic:)
On a day, alack the day!
Love, whose month is ever May,
Spied a blossom passing fair
Playing in the wanton air:
Through the velvet leaves the wind,
All unseen, can passage find;
That the lover, sick to death,
Wish himself the heaven's breath.
(SHAKSPERE: _Love's Labor's Lost_, IV. 3. ab. 1590.)
Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee
Jest, and youthful jollity,
Quips and cranks and wanton wiles,
Nods and becks and wreathed smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek.
(MILTON: _L'Allegro_. 1634.)
Souls of Poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Have ye tippled drink more fine
Than mine host's Canary wine?
Or are fruits of Paradise
Sweeter than those dainty pies
Of venison? O generous food!
Drest as though bold Robin Hood
Would, with his maid Marian,
Sup and bowse from horn and can.
(KEATS: _Lines on the Mermaid Tavern_. 1820.)
_Four-stress anapestic._
What I speak, my fair Chloe, and what I write, shows
The difference there is betwixt nature and art:
I court others in verse; but I love thee in prose:
And they have my whimsies; but thou hast my heart.
(PRIOR: _A Better Answer_. ab. 1710.)
Prior's anapests well illustrate the appropriateness of the measure for
light tripping effects, such as are sought _vers de société_. See also
the measure of Goldsmith's _Retaliation_, especially the passage
beginning--
"Here lies David Garrick, describe me who can;
An abridgment of all that was pleasant in man."
The small birds rejoice in the green leaves returning,
The murmuring streamlet winds clear through the vale;
The hawthorn trees blow in the dews of the morning,
And wild scatter'd cowslips bedeck the green dale.
(BURNS: _The Chevalier's Lament_. 1788.)
The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
(BYRON: _The Destruction of Sennacherib_. 1815.)
(With three-stress:)
Believe me, if all those endearing young charms,
Which I gaze on so fondly to-day,
Were to change by to-morrow, and fleet in my arms,
Like fairy-gifts fading away,
Thou wouldst still be ador'd, as this moment thou art,
Let thy loveliness fade as it will,
And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart
Would entwine itself verdantly still.
(THOMAS MOORE: _Believe me, if all those endearing young charms._ ab.
1825.)
_four-stress dactylic_.
After the pangs of a desperate lover,
When day and night I have sighed all in vain;
Ah, what a pleasure it is to discover
In her eyes pity, who causes my pain!
(DRYDEN: Song in _An Evening's Love_. 1668.)
Of this song Mr. Saintsbury says that it is "one of the rare examples of
a real dactylic metre in English, where the dactyls are not, as usual,
equally to be scanned as anapests." (_Life of Dryden_, Men of Letters
Series, p. 62.) Here, as almost always in English, the measure is
catalectic, a final dactyl being instinctively avoided, except in short
two-stress lines.
Warriors and chiefs! should the shaft or the sword
Pierce me in leading the host of the Lord,
Heed not the corse, though a king's, in your path:
Bury your steel in the bosoms of Gath!
(BYRON: _Song of Saul before his Last Battle._ 1815.)
Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King,
Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing:
And, pressing a troop, unable to stoop
And see the rogues flourish and honest folk droop,
Marched them along, fifty-score strong,
Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song.
(BROWNING: _Cavalier Tunes._ 1843.)
Here the metre is varied interestingly by pauses. Thus in lines 1 and 5
the light syllables of the second foot are wholly wanting.
_Five-stress iambic._
(For specimens, see Part Two.)
_Five-stress trochaic._
What, there's nothing in the moon noteworthy?
Nay: for if that moon could love a mortal,
Use, to charm him (so to fit a fancy),
All her magic ('tis the old sweet mythos),
She would turn a new side to her mortal,
Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steersman--
Blank to Zoroaster on his terrace,
Blind to Galileo on his turret,
Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats--him, even!
(BROWNING: _One Word More._ 1855.)
This is a rare specimen of unrimed verse in other than iambic rhythm.
(Catalectic:)
Then methought I heard a mellow sound,
Gathering up from all the lower ground;
Narrowing in to where they sat assembled
Low voluptuous music winding trembled,
Wov'n in circles: they that heard it sighed,
Panted, hand-in-hand with faces pale,
Swung themselves, and in low tones replied;
Till the fountain spouted, showering wide
Sleet of diamond-drift and pearly hail.
(TENNYSON: _The Vision of Sin._ 1842.)
_Five-stress anapestic._
As thy Love is discovered almighty, almighty be proved
Thy power, that exists with and for it, of being beloved!
He who did most, shall bear most; the strongest shall stand the most
weak.
'Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for! my flesh, that I seek
In the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be
A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me,
Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever: a Hand like this hand
Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ stand!
(BROWNING: _Saul._ 1845.)
Let it flame or fade, and the war roll down like a wind,
We have proved we have hearts in a cause, we are noble still,
And myself have awaked, as it seems, to the better mind;
It is better to fight for the good than to rail at the ill;
I have felt with my native land, I am one with my kind,
I embrace the purpose of God, and the doom assign'd.
(TENNYSON: _Maud_, III. vi. 1855.)
Here frequent iambi are substituted for anapests; as in line 1, second
and fourth feet; lines 2 and 3, fifth foot; line 5, third foot.
_Five-stress dactylic._
This form is almost unknown. In the following lines we find five-stress
catalectic verse of dactyls and trochees combined:
Surely the thought in a man's heart hopes or fears
Now that forgetfulness needs must here have stricken
Anguish, and sweetened the sealed-up springs of tears.
(SWINBURNE: _A Century of Roundels._)
_Six-stress iambic._
(For specimens, see Part Two.)
_Six-stress trochaic._
(With alternate lines catalectic:)
Day by day thy shadow shines in heaven beholden,
Even the sun, the shining shadow of thy face:
King, the ways of heaven before thy feet grow golden;
God, the soul of earth is kindled with thy grace.
(SWINBURNE: _The Last Oracle._)
_Six-stress anapestic._
For I trust if an enemy's fleet came yonder round by the hill,
And the rushing battle-bolt sang from the three-decker out of
the foam,
That the smooth-faced snubnosed rogue would leap from his counter
and till,
And strike, if he could, were it but with his cheating yard-wand,
home.
(TENNYSON: _Maud_, I. i. 1855.)
(See note on p. 41.)
All under the deeps of the darkness are glimmering: all over
impends
An immeasurable infinite flower of the dark that dilates and
descends,
That exalts and expands in its breathless and blind efflorescence
of heart
As it broadens and bows to the wave-ward, and breathes not, and
hearkens apart.
(SWINBURNE: _The Garden of Cymodoce_, in _Songs of the Springtides_.)
_Six-stress dactylic._
(For this, see chiefly Part Two.)
(Catalectic:)
Dosn't thou 'ear my 'erse's legs, as they canters awaay?
Proputty, proputty, proputty--that's what I 'ears 'em saay.
Proputty, proputty, proputty--Sam, thou's an ass for thy paains:
Theer's moor sense i' one o' 'is legs nor in all thy braains.
(TENNYSON: _Northern Farmer--new style._ ab. 1860.)
Thee I behold as a bird borne in with the wind from the west,
Straight from the sunset, across white waves whence rose as a
daughter
Venus thy mother, in years when the world was a water at rest.
(SWINBURNE: _Hesperia._)
_Seven-stress iambic._
There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away
When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay;
'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone, which fades so
fast,
But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere youth itself be past.
(BYRON: _Stanzas for Music._ 1815.)
Here we have anacrusis in lines 2 and 4.
Beyond the path of the outmost sun, through utter darkness
hurled--
Further than ever comet flared or vagrant star-dust swirled--
Live such as fought and sailed and ruled and loved and made our
world.
(KIPLING: _Wolcott Balestier._)
(See also under Seven-stress Verse, in Part Two.)
_Seven-stress trochaic._
(Catalectic:)
Clear the way, my lords and lackeys, you have had your day.
Here you have your answer, England's yea against your nay;
Long enough your house has held you: up, and clear the way!
(SWINBURNE: _Clear the Way._)
_Seven-stress anapestic._
(With feminine ending:)
Come on then, ye dwellers by nature in darkness, and like to the
leaves' generations,
That are little of might, that are moulded of mire, unenduring and
shadowlike nations,
Poor plumeless ephemerals, comfortless mortals, as visions of
creatures fast fleeing,
Lift up your mind unto us that are deathless, and dateless the date
of our being.
(SWINBURNE: _The Birds_, from Aristophanes.)
Of this translation Mr. Swinburne says that it was undertaken from a
consideration of the fact that the "marvellous metrical invention of the
anapestic heptameter was almost exactly reproducible in a language to
which all variations and combinations of anapestic, iambic, or trochaic
metre are as natural and pliable as all dactylic and spondaic forms of
verse are unnatural and abhorrent." ... "I have not attempted," he says
further, "the impossible and undesirable task of reproducing the rare
exceptional effect of a line overcharged on purpose with a
preponderance of heavy-footed spondees.... My main desire ... was to
renew as far as possible for English ears the music of this resonant and
triumphant metre, which goes ringing at full gallop as of horses who
'dance as 'twere to the music
Their own hoofs make.'"
(_Studies in Song_, p. 68.)
_Seven-stress dactylic._
This form of verse may be said to be wanting. Schipper quotes as
possible examples some lines which (as he remarks) seem to be made
merely for the metrical purpose:
"Out of the kingdom of Christ shall be gathered, by angels o'er
Satan victorious,
All that offendeth, that lieth, that faileth to honor his name
ever glorious."
(_Englische Metrik_, vol. ii. p. 419.)
_Eight-stress iambic._
This is almost unknown in English verse, because where conceivably
occurring it shows an irresistible tendency to break up into two halves
of four stresses each. William Webbe, in his _Discourse of English
Poetrie_ (1586), quoted these lines as "the longest verse in length
which I have seen used in English":
"Where virtue wants and vice abounds, there wealth is but a baited
hook,
To make men swallow down their bane, before on danger deep they
look."
_Eight-stress trochaic._
(Catalectic:)
Love took up the glass of Time, and turn'd it in his glowing hands;
Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.
Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with
might;
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of
sight.
(TENNYSON: _Locksley Hall._ 1842.)
Open then I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not an instant stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door,--
Perched upon a bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door.
(POE: _The Raven._ 1845.)
Night, in utmost noon forlorn and strong, with heart athirst and
fasting,
Hungers here, barred up forever, whence as one whom dreams affright,
Day recoils before the low-browed lintel threatening doom and
casting Night.
(SWINBURNE: _Night in Guernsey._)
In the last line of this specimen we have a nine-accent verse,--very
rare in English poetry.
The tendency of all eight-accent lines being to break up into halves of
four accents, the distinction between four-stress and eight-stress verse
may be at times only a question of printing. Thus, Thackeray's _Sorrows
of Werther_ might be regarded as eight-stress trochaic, though commonly
printed in short lines:
"Werther had a love for Charlotte
Such as words could never utter.
Would you know how first he saw her?
She was cutting bread and butter."
_Eight-stress anapestic._
Ere frost-flower and snow-blossom faded and fell, and the splendor
of winter had passed out of sight,
The ways of the woodlands were fairer and stranger than dreams that
fulfil us in sleep with delight;
The breath of the mouths of the winds had hardened on tree-tops and
branches that glittered and swayed
Such wonders and glories of blossomlike snow, or of frost that
out-lightens all flowers till it fade,
That the sea was not lovelier than here was the land, nor the night
than the day, nor the day than the night,
Nor the winter sublimer with storm than the spring: such mirth had
the madness and might in thee made,
March, master of winds, bright minstrel and marshal of storms that
enkindle the season they smite.
(SWINBURNE: _March._)
_Eight-stress dactylic._
Onward and onward the highway runs to the distant city, impatiently
bearing
Tidings of human joy and disaster, of love and of hate, of doing
and daring.
(LONGFELLOW: _Golden Legend_, iv. 1851.)
The breathlessly continuous character of such long anapestic or
dactylic lines may of course be interrupted, by way of relief, by the
substitution of iambi or trochees. In the specimen from Swinburne such a
resting-place is found in line 3, where a light syllable is omitted
after _winds_. In the specimen from Longfellow the words _high-way_,
_distant_, _human_, of course, fill the places of complete dactyls.