English Verse: Specimens Illustrating its Principles and HistoryAlden, Raymond MacDonald
General
English Verse: Specimens Illustrating its Principles and History
Alden, Raymond MacDonald
English language -- Versification; English poetry
The facts here set down for each specimen of verse group themselves in
four divisions. In the first place, each line of verse is either
"run-on" or "end-stopped"; and, in riming couplets, it is also of
interest to know whether the second line of the couplet is run-on into
the following couplet. In the second place, the cesural pause occurs
either near the middle of the line or elsewhere, or--it may be--is
omitted altogether. In the third place, the line may have a feminine
ending. In the fourth place, it may contain some other foot than the
regular iambus.
There is some room for difference of judgment as to whether a given line
is "end-stopped" or "run-on"; but with occasional exceptions the
presence or want of a mark of punctuation may be made the determining
element. Obviously one may find such clear phrase-pauses, without
punctuation, as will justify the caption "end-stopped."
There is far more divergence of judgment in the recognition of the
cesura. Some writers on prosody treat practically every line of ten
syllables as having a cesural pause, and certainly some slight
phrase-pause may almost always be found. In the following table,
however, the cesura has been recognized only when there is a grammatical
or rhetorical pause so considerable as--in most cases--to require a mark
of punctuation. Such a verse, then, as--
"Fate snatch'd her early to the pitying sky"
is counted as having "no cesura." The cesura is counted as "medial" when
occurring after the fourth, fifth, or sixth syllable; elsewhere it is
regarded as "variant." The significance of this distinction is very
clear in the comparison of the heroic couplet of the "classical" with
that of the "romantic" school of poets.[60]
It is in the last group of facts, those relating to substituted feet,
that the subjective element is most embarrassing. There can be no very
general agreement among readers as to the degree of accent necessary to
change a pair of syllables from an "iambus" to a "pyrrhic" or a
"spondee." The other two forms of substitution (inverted accent, giving
"trochees," and trisyllabic feet, giving "anapests") are somewhat more
definitely determinable. In the following table the naming of all these
feet is based on what is believed to be the natural reading of the
verse, with a due regard for both rhetorical and metrical accent. In the
verse--
"By these the springs of property were bent"
the fourth foot is counted a pyrrhic; so also in this--
"Their busy teachers mingled with the Jews,"
although here a certain secondary accent on the eighth syllable is
possible. In such a verse as--
"There is a path on the sea's azure floor"
the third foot is counted a pyrrhic and the fourth a spondee.[61]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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