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.