The Principles of English Versification Part 22

POPE, Essay on Criticism, I, 95.

The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep.

WORDSWORTH, Immortality Ode.

Departed from thee; and thou resembl'st now.

MILTON, Paradise Lost, IV, 839.

To quench the drouth of Phebus; which as they taste.

MILTON, Comus, 66.

When this extra syllable comes at the end of the line it is more noticeable; for if it is a weak syllable, it tends to give the line a falling rhythm, and if it is a heavy syllable, it distinctly lengthens the line, with a semi-alexandrine effect--

Of rebel angels, by whose aid aspiring.

MILTON, Paradise Lost, I, 38.

Remember who dies with thee, and despise death.

FLETCHER, Valentinian, V, i.

Sometimes there are two consecutive lines having such hypermetrical syllables--

Extolling patience as the truest fort.i.tude; And to the bearing well of all calamities.

MILTON, Samson Agonistes, 654 f.

Much more frequent, however, is the trisyllabic effect in which the number of syllables of a line remains constant, that is, in the heroic or 5-stress line does not exceed ten--

Infinite wrath and infinite despair.

MILTON, Paradise Lost, IV, 74.

Suddenly flashed on her a wild desire.

TENNYSON, Lancelot and Elaine, 355.

And the following line (Comus, 8) contains an extra syllable at the end, one in the middle, and also a trisyllabic effect at the beginning--

Strive to keep up a frail and feverish being.

This last phenomenon, the trisyllabic (or dactylic, or anapestic) effect, is commonly described as an inversion--the 'rule' being given that in certain parts of the line the iamb is _inverted_ and becomes a trochee. This explanation is convenient, but it is open to the objection of inaccuracy. It almost stands to reason that when a rising rhythm is established the sudden reversal of it would produce a harsh discordant effect, would practically destroy the rhythmic movement for the time being. So it is in music, at any rate,[95] whereas it is not so with these 'inverted feet' of verse. Therefore it seems more reasonable to scan such a line as that of Tennyson thus:

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ [95] The p.r.o.nounced syncopations of ragtime partially ill.u.s.trate this. +--------------------------------------------------------------+

? Sud denly flashed on her a wild desire,

and the subst.i.tution is simply that of a triple rising (anapestic) for a duple rising (iambic) rhythm in the same time. _Sud_-is a monosyllabic foot, and the preceding rest is easily accounted for by the pause at the end of the previous line. In fact, this phenomenon is nearly always in immediate proximity to a pause either at the beginning of a line or in the middle. Very common is the movement--

Flas.h.i.+ng thick flames, wheel within wheel withdrawn.

MILTON, Paradise Lost, VI, 751.

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion.

Sh.e.l.lEY, Ode to the West Wind.

Or if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer That leaves look pale, dreading the Winter's near.

SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet 97.

Less simple are the following lines from Samson Agonistes--

The mystery of G.o.d, given me under pledge. 378.

With goodness principl'd not to reject. 760.

The jealousy of love, powerful of sway. 791.

To satisfy thy l.u.s.t: love seeks to have love. 837.

Still more unusual are--

Yet fell: remember and fear to transgress.

Paradise Lost, VI, 912.

Of thrones and mighty seraphim prostrate.

Ibid., VI, 841.

But in the last example Milton's p.r.o.nunciation would give the second syllable of 'prostrate' a weak accent to support the metrical stress.

That he was willing to take the extreme risk, however, and actually invert the rhythm of the last foot, appears from unequivocal instances in Paradise Lost:

Which of us who beholds the bright surface.

VI, 472.

Beyond all past example and future.

X, 840.

In a short poem such lines as these last would presumably be unthinkable; probably Milton counted on the length of Paradise Lost to fix the rhythm so securely in the reader's ear that even this bold departure from the normal would seem a welcome relief. But it is both notable and certain that in a lyric measure the very same inversion does not seem unpleasantly dissonant--

I'm sittin' on the stile, Mary, Where we sat side by side On a bright May mornin' long ago, When first you were my bride.

The corn was springin' fresh and green, And the lark sang loud and high, And the red was on your lip, Mary, And the love-light in your eye.

LADY DUFFERIN, Lament of the Irish Emigrant.

Allied to this practice of inversion, or apparent inversion, are two other phenomena: the deliberate violation of normal word-accent to fit the metrical stress,[96] and an a.n.a.logous violation of phrasal stress.

The former is not such an entirely arbitrary procedure as it might at first seem; for at one period in the history of the language the accent of many words (especially those of French origin) was uncertain. Chaucer could say, without forcing, either _na_ture, or na_ture_. The revival of English poetry in the sixteenth century owed a great deal to Chaucerian example, and thus a tradition of variable accent was accepted and became practically a convention, not limited to those words in which it had originally occurred. Parallels to Milton's "but extreme s.h.i.+ft" (Comus, 273) are very frequent in Spenser and Shakespeare: the rhythm is not ?

_? ? _? nor ? ? _? _? but a sort of compromise between the two. So in Sh.e.l.ley's To a Skylark--

In _profuse_ strains of unpremeditated art,

and in verse of all kinds.

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ [96] In the specific cases mentioned below, this phenomenon is historically known as "recession of accent"; and it sometimes occurs in non-metrical contexts. It is also very similar to one of the aspects of pitch; see pages 181 f., above. +--------------------------------------------------------------+

The wrenching of accent for metrical purposes, moreover, is not confined to the dissyllabic words which show the simple recession of accent. Some poets, especially the moderns (among others, Rossetti and Swinburne) have deliberately forced the word accent to conform to the metrical pattern in a way that can scarcely be called adaptation or adjustment; that is to say, the irregularities cannot successfully be 'organized' by syncopation and subst.i.tution so as to produce a true rhythmic movement.

For example--