A History of English VersificationSchipper, J. (Jakob)
History
A History of English Versification
Schipper, J. (Jakob)
English language -- Versification; English poetry -- History and criticism
Generally speaking this metre is used in continuous verse in such a way
that masculine and feminine couplets are intermixed without regular
order;[172] when it is used in stanzas the forms previously mentioned in
§ 181 are usually adopted.
This metre is used also, in an unrhymed form and with feminine endings
throughout, in Longfellow's _Song of Hiawatha_, in which there are
noticeably more run-on lines than in rhymed four-foot trochaics.
§ =186.= The =three-foot trochaic line=, both with feminine and with
masculine endings, has been discussed in previous sections (§§ 182-3) so
far as it is derived from seven- and six-foot verse. It may also be
derived from the six-foot metre through the breaking up of the line by
means of leonine rhyme, as in the following rhyming couplets:
_Áge, I dó abhór thee,
Yóuth, I dó adóre thee;
Yóuth ís fúll of spórt,
Áge's bréath is shórt._
Passionate Pilgrim, No. 12.
§ =187. Two-foot trochaic lines= generally occur among longer lines of
anisometrical stanzas; but we also find them now and then without longer
lines in stanzas and poems. Feminine verses of this kind, which may be
regarded as four-foot lines broken up by leonine rhyme, we have in
Dodsley (_Poets_, xi. 112):
_Lóve comméncing,
Jóys dispénsing;
Béauty smíling,
Wít beguíling_;
and masculine ones in a short poem, possibly by Pope, _To Quinbus
Flestrin, the Man-Mountain_ (p. 481):
_Ín a máze,
Lóst, I gáze,
Cán our éyes
Réach thy síze?
Máy my láys
Swéll with práise_, &c.
§ =188. One-foot trochaic lines= seem only to occur among longer
verses in regular stanzas, as e.g. in a stanza of Addison's opera
_Rosamund_ (I. ii. 38):
_Túrning,
Búrning,
Chánging,
Ránging._
We even find sometimes a line consisting of a single (of course
accented) syllable in Swinburne, as e.g. in his poem in trochaic verse,
_A Dead Friend_ (_A Century of Roundels_, pp. 12-19):
_Góne, O géntle héart and trúe,
Friénd of hópes forgóne,
Hópes and hópeful dáys with yóu,
Góne?_
It is common to all these trochaic metres that their structure,
especially that of the longer ones, is (except for the varying caesura)
very regular, and that they have only very few rhythmical licences,
chiefly slight slurring.
NOTES:
[172] For examples see _Metrik_, ii, § 218.
CHAPTER XIV
IAMBIC-ANAPAESTIC AND TROCHAIC-DACTYLIC
METRES
§ =189.= The =iambic-anapaestic rhythm= has been touched on before in
connexion with the four-stressed verse (cf. § 72) which was developed
from the alliterative long line, and which at the end of the Middle
English and in the beginning of the Modern English period, under the
growing influence of the even-beat metres, had assumed more or less
regular iambic-anapaestic character.
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