English Verse. Raymond Macdonald Alden
Of this song Mr. Saintsbury says that it is "one of the rare examples of a real dactylic metre in English, where the dactyls are not, as usual, equally to be scanned as anapests." (Life of Dryden, Men of Letters Series, p. 62.) Here, as almost always in English, the measure is catalectic, a final dactyl being instinctively avoided, except in short two-stress lines.
Warriors and chiefs! should the shaft or the sword
Pierce me in leading the host of the Lord,
Heed not the corse, though a king's, in your path:
Bury your steel in the bosoms of Gath!
(Byron: Song of Saul before his Last Battle. 1815.)
Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King,
Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing:
And, pressing a troop, unable to stoop
And see the rogues flourish and honest folk droop,
Marched them along, fifty-score strong,
Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song.
(Browning: Cavalier Tunes. 1843.)
Here the metre is varied interestingly by pauses. Thus in lines 1 and 5 the light syllables of the second foot are wholly wanting.
Five-stress iambic.
(For specimens, see Part Two.)
Five-stress trochaic.
What, there's nothing in the moon noteworthy?
Nay: for if that moon could love a mortal,
Use, to charm him (so to fit a fancy),
All her magic ('tis the old sweet mythos),
She would turn a new side to her mortal,
Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steersman—
Blank to Zoroaster on his terrace,
Blind to Galileo on his turret,
Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats—him, even!
(Browning: One Word More. 1855.)
This is a rare specimen of unrimed verse in other than iambic rhythm.
(Catalectic:)
Then methought I heard a mellow sound,
Gathering up from all the lower ground;
Narrowing in to where they sat assembled
Low voluptuous music winding trembled,
Wov'n in circles: they that heard it sighed,
Panted, hand-in-hand with faces pale,
Swung themselves, and in low tones replied;
Till the fountain spouted, showering wide
Sleet of diamond-drift and pearly hail.
(Tennyson: The Vision of Sin. 1842.)
Five-stress anapestic.
As thy Love is discovered almighty, almighty be proved
Thy power, that exists with and for it, of being beloved!
He who did most, shall bear most; the strongest shall stand the most weak.
'Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for! my flesh, that I seek
In the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be
A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me,
Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever: a Hand like this hand
Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ stand!
(Browning: Saul. 1845.)
Let it flame or fade, and the war roll down like a wind,
We have proved we have hearts in a cause, we are noble still,
And myself have awaked, as it seems, to the better mind;
It is better to fight for the good than to rail at the ill;
I have felt with my native land, I am one with my kind,
I embrace the purpose of God, and the doom assign'd.
(Tennyson: Maud, III. vi. 1855.)
Here frequent iambi are substituted for anapests; as in line 1, second and fourth feet; lines 2 and 3, fifth foot; line 5, third foot.
Five-stress dactylic.
This form is almost unknown. In the following lines we find five-stress catalectic verse of dactyls and trochees combined:
Surely the thought in a man's heart hopes or fears
Now that forgetfulness needs must here have stricken
Anguish, and sweetened the sealed-up springs of tears.
(Swinburne: A Century of Roundels.)
Six-stress iambic.
(For specimens, see Part Two.)
Six-stress trochaic.
(With alternate lines catalectic:)
Day by day thy shadow shines in heaven beholden,
Even the sun, the shining shadow of thy face:
King, the ways of heaven before thy feet grow golden;
God, the soul of earth is kindled with thy grace.
(Swinburne: The Last Oracle.)
Six-stress anapestic.
For I trust if an enemy's fleet came yonder round by the hill,
And the rushing battle-bolt sang from the three-decker out of the foam,
That the smooth-faced snubnosed rogue would leap from his counter and till,
And strike, if he could, were it but with his cheating yard-wand, home.
(Tennyson: Maud, I. i. 1855.)
(See note on p. 41.)
All under the deeps of the darkness are glimmering: all over impends
An immeasurable infinite flower of the dark that dilates and descends,
That exalts and expands in its breathless and blind efflorescence of heart
As it broadens and bows to the wave-ward, and breathes not, and hearkens apart.
(Swinburne: The Garden of Cymodoce, in Songs of the Springtides.)
Six-stress dactylic.
(For this, see chiefly Part Two.)
(Catalectic:)
Dosn't thou 'ear my 'erse's legs, as they canters awaay?
Proputty, proputty, proputty—that's what I 'ears 'em saay.
Proputty, proputty, proputty—Sam, thou's an ass for thy paains:
Theer's moor sense i' one o' 'is legs nor in all thy braains.
(Tennyson: Northern Farmer—new style. ab. 1860.)
Thee I behold as a bird borne in with the wind from the west,
Straight from the sunset, across white waves whence rose as a daughter
Venus thy mother, in years when the world was a water at rest.
(Swinburne: