English Verse. Raymond Macdonald Alden
feminine ending:)
If you go over desert and mountain,
Far into the country of sorrow,
To-day and to-night and to-morrow,
And maybe for months and for years;
You shall come, with a heart that is bursting
For trouble and toiling and thirsting,
You shall certainly come to the fountain
At length—to the Fountain of Tears.
(Arthur O'Shaughnessy: The Fountain of Tears. 1870.)
Here the extra light syllable at the end of the line is really the initial light syllable of the following line, as in the specimen on p. 29, above.
So this is a psalm of the waters—
The wavering, wandering waters:
With languages learned in the forest,
With secrets of earth's lonely caverns,
The mystical waters go by me
On errands of love and of beauty,
On embassies friendly and gentle,
With shimmer of brown and of silver.
(S. Weir Mitchell: A Psalm of the Waters. 1890.)
Here, also, the final light syllable might be said to take the place of the missing initial syllable; but the structure of the verse, with the fact that the initial anapest is always truncated and that the final syllable is never accented, indicates that the verse as it stands is the norm of the poem—three-stress anapestic, with initial truncation and feminine ending.
Three-stress dactylic.
(Catalectic:)
This is a spray the Bird clung to,
Making it blossom with pleasure,
Ere the high tree-top she sprung to,
Fit for her nest and her treasure.
(Browning: Misconceptions. 1855.)
Four-stress iambic.
(For specimens, see Part Two.)
Four-stress trochaic.
Maiden, crowned with glossy blackness,
Lithe as panther forest-roaming,
Long-armed naiad, when she dances,
On a stream of ether floating.
(George Eliot: Song from The Spanish Gypsy, Book i. 1868.)
Westward, westward Hiawatha
Sailed into the fiery sunset,
Sailed into the purple vapors,
Sailed into the dusk of evening.
(Longfellow: Hiawatha. 1855.)
Honour, riches, marriage-blessing,
Long continuance, and increasing,
Hourly joys be still upon you!
Juno sings her blessings on you.
(Shakspere: Juno's Song in The Tempest, IV. i. ab. 1610.)
(Catalectic:)
On a day, alack the day!
Love, whose month is ever May,
Spied a blossom passing fair
Playing in the wanton air:
Through the velvet leaves the wind,
All unseen, can passage find;
That the lover, sick to death,
Wish himself the heaven's breath.
(Shakspere: Love's Labor's Lost, IV. 3. ab. 1590.)
Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee
Jest, and youthful jollity,
Quips and cranks and wanton wiles,
Nods and becks and wreathed smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek.
(Milton: L'Allegro. 1634.)
Souls of Poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Have ye tippled drink more fine
Than mine host's Canary wine?
Or are fruits of Paradise
Sweeter than those dainty pies
Of venison? O generous food!
Drest as though bold Robin Hood
Would, with his maid Marian,
Sup and bowse from horn and can.
(Keats: Lines on the Mermaid Tavern. 1820.)
Four-stress anapestic.
What I speak, my fair Chloe, and what I write, shows
The difference there is betwixt nature and art:
I court others in verse; but I love thee in prose:
And they have my whimsies; but thou hast my heart.
(Prior: A Better Answer. ab. 1710.)
Prior's anapests well illustrate the appropriateness of the measure for light tripping effects, such as are sought vers de société. See also the measure of Goldsmith's Retaliation, especially the passage beginning—
"Here lies David Garrick, describe me who can;
An abridgment of all that was pleasant in man."
The small birds rejoice in the green leaves returning,
The murmuring streamlet winds clear through the vale;
The hawthorn trees blow in the dews of the morning,
And wild scatter'd cowslips bedeck the green dale.
(Burns: The Chevalier's Lament. 1788.)
The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
(Byron: The Destruction of Sennacherib. 1815.)
(With three-stress:)
Believe me, if all those endearing young charms,
Which I gaze on so fondly to-day,
Were to change by to-morrow, and fleet in my arms,
Like fairy-gifts fading away,
Thou wouldst still be ador'd, as this moment thou art, Let thy loveliness fade as it will, And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart Would entwine itself verdantly still.
(Thomas Moore: Believe me, if all those endearing young charms. ab. 1825.)
Four-stress dactylic.
After the pangs of a desperate lover,
When day and night I have sighed all in vain;
Ah, what a pleasure it is to discover
In her eyes pity, who causes my pain!
(Dryden: Song in An Evening's Love. 1668.)