§ =131.= In he Modern English period this metre has also found great favour, and we may, as in the case of other metres, distinguish between a strict and a freer variety of it. The strict form was, and is, mostly represented in lyric poetry, in verses rhyming in couplets or in cross rhyme. The rhythm is generally in this case (since the separation between iambic and trochaic verse-forms became definitely established) strictly iambic, generally with monosyllabic rhymes. A greater interest attaches to the freer variety of the metre, which is to be regarded as a direct continuation of the Middle English four-foot verse, inasmuch as it was practised by the poets of the first Modern English period in imitation of earlier models, and has been further cultivated by their successors down to the most recent times. The characteristic feature in this treatment of the four-foot verse is the frequent suppression of the anacrusis, by which it comes to resemble the four-beat verse, along with which it is often used. But whilst the latter generally has an iambic-anapaestic or trochaic-dactylic structure, and is constantly divided by the caesura into two halves, the Modern English four-foot verse of the freer type has, as a rule, an alternately iambic and trochaic rhythm, with a rare occurrence of caesuras. Shakespeare and other dramatists often employ this metre for lyrical passages in their dramas. Of longer poems in the earlier period Milton's _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_ are conspicuous examples. The following passage from _L'Allegro_ (ll. 11-16) may serve as a specimen: _But cóme thou Góddess fáir and frée, In héaven yclépt Euphrósyné, Ánd by mén héart-easing Mírth, Whom lóvely Vénus, át a bírth, Wíth two síster Gráces móre, To ívy-crównëd Bácchus bóre_, &c. The structure of the verse is essentially iambic, though the iambic metre frequently, by suppression of the initial theses, as in the thirteenth and fifteenth lines of this passage, falls into a trochaic cadence. Pure trochaic verses, i.e. those that begin with an accented syllable and end with an unaccented one, occur in these two poems, in couplets, only once, _L'Allegro_ (ll. 69-70): _Stráight mine éye hath cáught new pléasures, Whíles the lándscape róund it méasures._ With masculine endings such couplets are frequent, e.g. _Il Penseroso_, 67-8: _Tó behóld the wándering móon, Ríding néar the híghest nóon;_ further, ll. 75-6, 81-2, 141-2, &c. As a rule, pure iambic lines rhyme together, or an iambic with a line that has a trochaic cadence, as, for instance, in the above specimen, _L'Allegro_, 13-14 and 15-16. Besides initial truncation there also occur here the other metrical licences observed in iambic rhythm.