English Verse. Raymond Macdonald Alden
Hesperia.)
Seven-stress iambic.
There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away
When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay;
'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone, which fades so fast,
But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere youth itself be past.
(Byron: Stanzas for Music. 1815.)
Here we have anacrusis in lines 2 and 4.
Beyond the path of the outmost sun, through utter darkness hurled—
Further than ever comet flared or vagrant star-dust swirled—
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, unenduring 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 exceptional 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 eight-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