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Live such as fought and sailed and ruled and loved and

made our world.

(KIPLING: Wolcott Balestier.)

(See also under Seven-stress Verse, in Part Two.)

Seven-stress trochaic.

(Catalectic:)

Clear the way, my lords and lackeys, you have had your day. Here you have your answer, England's yea against your nay; Long enough your house has held you: up, and clear the way! (SWINBURNE: Clear the Way.)

Seven-stress anapestic.

(With feminine ending :)

Come on then, ye dwellers by nature in darkness, and like to the leaves' generations,

That are little of might, that are moulded of mire, unendur

ing and shadowlike nations,

Poor plumeless ephemerals, comfortless mortals, as visions of creatures fast fleeing,

Lift up your mind unto us that are deathless, and dateless the date of our being.

(SWINBURNE: The Birds, from Aristophanes.)

Of this translation Mr. Swinburne says that it was undertaken from a consideration of the fact that the "marvellous metrical invention of the anapestic heptameter was almost exactly reproducible in a language to which all variations and combinations of anapestic, iambic, or trochaic metre are as natural and pliable as all dactylic and spondaic forms of verse are unnatural and abhorrent." ... "I have not attempted," he says further, “the impossible and undesirable task of reproducing the rare excep

tional effect of a line overcharged on purpose with a preponderance of heavy-footed spondees... .. My main desire was to renew as far as possible for English ears the music of this resonant and triumphant metre, which goes ringing at full gallop as of horses who

'dance as 'twere to the music

Their own hoofs make."

(Studies in Song, p. 68.)

Seven-stress dactylic.

This form of verse may be said to be wanting. Schipper quotes as possible examples some lines which (as he remarks) seem to be made merely for the metrical purpose:

"Out of the kingdom of Christ shall be gathered, by angels o'er Satan victorious,

All that offendeth, that lieth, that faileth to honor his name ever glorious." (Englische Metrik, vol. ii. p. 419.)

Eight-stress iambic.

This is almost unknown in English verse, because where conceivably occurring it shows an irresistible tendency to break up into two halves of four stresses each. William Webbe, in his Discourse of English Poetrie (1586), quoted these lines as "the longest verse in length which I have seen used in English": "Where virtue wants and vice abounds, there wealth is but a baited hook,

To make men swallow down their bane, before on danger deep they look."

Eight-stress trochaic.

(Catalectic:)

Love took up the glass of Time, and turn'd it in his glowing

hands;

Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.

Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might;

Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of sight. (TENNYSON: Locksley Hall. 1842.)

Open then I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,

In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore. Not the least obeisance made he; not an instant stopped or stayed he;

But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber

door,

Perched upon a bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door. (POE: The Raven. 1845.)

Night, in utmost noon forlorn and strong, with heart athirst and fasting,

Hungers here, barred up forever, whence as one whom dreams affright,

Day recoils before the low-browed lintel threatening doom and casting Night. (SWINBURNE: Night in Guernsey.)

In the last line of this specimen we have a nine-accent verse, very rare in English poetry.

The tendency of all eight-accent lines being to break up into halves of four accents, the distinction between four-stress and sight-stress verse may be at times only a question of printing. Thus, Thackeray's Sorrows of Werther might be regarded as eight-stress trochaic, though commonly printed in short lines: "Werther had a love for Charlotte

Such as words could never utter.
Would you know how first he saw her?
She was cutting bread and butter."

Eight-stress anapestic.

Ere frost-flower and snow-blossom faded and fell, and the splendor of winter had passed out of sight,

The ways of the woodlands were fairer and stranger than dreams that fulfil us in sleep with delight;

The breath of the mouths of the winds had hardened on tree-tops and branches that glittered and swayed

Such wonders and glories of blossomlike snow, or of frost that out-lightens all flowers till it fade,

That the sea was not lovelier than here was the land, nor the night than the day, nor the day than the night, Nor the winter sublimer with storm than the spring: such mirth had the madness and might in thee made,

March, master of winds, bright minstrel and marshal of storms that enkindle the season they smite.

(SWINBURNE: March.)

Eight-stress dactylic.

Onward and onward the highway runs to the distant city, impatiently bearing

Tidings of human joy and disaster, of love and of hate, of doing and daring.

(LONGFELLOW: Golden Legend, iv. 1851.)

The breathlessly continuous character of such long anapestic or dactylic lines may of course be interrupted, by way of relief, by the substitution of iambi or trochees. In the specimen from Swinburne such a resting-place is found in line 3, where a light syllable is omitted after winds. In the specimen from Longfellow the words highway, distant, human, of course, fill the places of complete dactyls.

COMBINATIONS AND SUBSTITUTIONS

i. Verses in which different sorts of feet are more or less regularly combined.

In the morning, O so early, my beloved, my beloved,

All the birds were singing blithely, as if never they would

cease:

'Twas a thrush sang in my garden,

the story!"

"Hear the story, hear

And the lark sang "Give us glory!" and the dove said "Give us peace."

(JEAN INGELOW: Give us Love and Give us Peace.)

Fair is our lot-O goodly is our heritage !

(Humble ye, my people, and be fearful in your mirth !) For the Lord our God Most High

He hath made the deep as dry,

He hath smote for us a pathway to the ends of all the Earth!

(KIPLING: A Song of the English.)

In both these specimens the full accent regularly recurs in only the alternate feet. Thus while the first specimen is technically eight-stress trochaic, there are in the normal reading of it only four full accents to the line. In other words the first, third, fifth, and seventh feet are regularly pyrrhics. (See p. 55.) The same thing appears in the specimen from Kipling: ye, and, in (in line 2) are accented only in a distinctly secondary fashion. Some have suggested, for such rhythms as these, the recognition of a foot made up of one stressed and three unstressed syllables. Lanier represents such measures (in The Science of English Verse) in four-eight time.

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