English Verse. Raymond Macdonald Alden
rocks,
And shivering shocks,
Shall break the locks
Of prison-gates;
And Phibbus' car
Shall shine from far,
And make and mar
The foolish Fates.
(Shakspere: Bottom's song in Midsummer Night's Dream, I. ii. ab. 1595.)
(In combination with three-stress:)
Only a little more
I have to write;
Then I'll give o'er,
And bid the world good-night.
'Tis but a flying minute
That I must stay,
Or linger in it;
And then I must away.
(Herrick: His Poetry his Pillar. 1648.)
In the second stanza we have the same measure with feminine ending.
(In combination with four-stress:)
Thus let me live, unseen, unknown,
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.
(Pope: Ode on Solitude. ab. 1700.)
Two-stress trochaic.
Could I catch that
Nimble traitor,
Scornful Laura,
Swift-foot Laura,
Soon then would I
Seek avengement.
(Campion: Anacreontics, in Observations in the Art of English Poesie. 1602.)
(In combination with four-stress:)
Dust that covers
Long dead lovers
Song blows off with breath that brightens;
At its flashes
Their white ashes
Burst in bloom that lives and lightens.
(Swinburne: Song in Season.)
(Catalectic, and in combination with three-stress:)
Summer's crest
Red-gold tressed,
Corn-flowers peeping under;—
Idle noons,
Lingering moons,
Sudden cloud,
Lightning's shroud,
Sudden rain,
Quick again
Smiles where late was thunder.
(George Eliot: Song from The Spanish Gypsy, Bk. i. 1868.)
The trochaic measures in The Spanish Gypsy are in imitation of the similar forms in Spanish poetry. See p. 114, below.
Two-stress anapestic.
(In combination with three-stress:)
Like a gloomy stain
On the emerald main
Alpheus rushed behind—
As an eagle pursuing
A dove to its ruin
Down the streams of the cloudy wind.
(Shelley: Arethusa. 1820.)
(With feminine ending:)
He is gone on the mountain,
He is lost to the forest,
Like a summer-dried fountain,
When our need was the sorest.
The font, reappearing,
From the raindrops shall borrow,
But to us comes no cheering,
To Duncan no morrow!
(Scott: Coronach, from The Lady of the Lake, Canto 3. 1810.)
(In combination with four-stress:)
Fear death?—to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face.
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
I am nearing the place,
The power of the night, the press of the storm,
The post of the foe;
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
Yet the strong man must go.
(Browning: Prospice. 1864.)
These specimens, as is usual in anapestic verse, show considerable freedom in the treatment of the part of the foot containing the light syllables, substituted iambi being very common. Note the iambi in the Shelley stanza, line 1, second foot, and line 5, first foot. In the latter case, however, the first light syllable of line 5 is really supplied by the syllable added to make the feminine ending of line 4. In like manner, in the Scott stanza, the first syllable of line 8 is really supplied by the -ing of line 7; and where we have both feminine ending (in line 1) and a full anapest following, the effect is that of a hypermetrical syllable which must be hurried over in the reading. In the specimen from Browning we find an iambus in the opening foot in lines 2 and 6 (also, of course, in lines 1 and 5).
Two-stress dactylic.
One more Unfortunate,
Weary of breath,
Rashly importunate,
Gone to her death!
Take her up tenderly,
Lift her with care;
Fashioned so slenderly,
Young, and so fair!
(Thomas Hood: The Bridge of Sighs. ab. 1830.)
Here the alternate lines are catalectic, both light syllables being wanting.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.
(Tennyson: Charge of the Light Brigade. 1854.)
Here the fourth and ninth lines are catalectic.
Loudly the sailors cheered
Svend of the Forked Beard,
As with his fleet he steered
Southward to Vendland;
Where with their courses hauled All were together called, Under the Isle of Svald Near to the mainland.
(Longfellow: Saga of King Olaf, xvii. 1863.)
In the reading of these stanzas from Tennyson and Longfellow there is so marked a stress on the final syllable as to make the second dactyl (except in the opening lines of the Tennyson stanza) more like a Cretic (in the classical terminology); i.e. a foot made up of two heavy syllables with a light syllable between them. But no such foot is generally recognized in English verse.