So also

The lóne couch of his éverlásting sleep.

SHELLEY.1

106. Emphatic Accents. It is impossible to lay down. any rule as to the number of emphatic accents in a verse; but it is important that in reading we should allow emphasis as well as accent to exert its influence; otherwise the verse becomes intolerably monotonous. Occasionally we meet with a line where all the accents seem nearly on a par, as regards the weight of emphasis attaching to each.

But look, the Mórn, in rússet mántle clád,

Walks o'er the déw of yón high éastward hill.

Hamlet.

But such lines are few in dramatic poetry. The mere presence of words with two metrical accents, as 66 'hónoráble,” necessitates some inequality of emphasis. In the rhyming couplet we may expect to find the full number of emphatic accents more frequently, for a very obvious reason. The rhyming couplet tends to antithesis, and antithesis involves emphasis. Four emphatic antithetical accents, with one unemphatic accent on some copulative word, are very common, but not unfrequently a line has five emphatic accents.

Who sees with equal eye, as Lord of all,

Probably "burst' " is somewhat less emphatic than the

1 It may be a question whether some of these iambs should not be scanned as trochees. See 103, 129, 138.

other accented syllables. Indeed, as there are many different degrees of emphasis, it would be necessary, in strict correctness, to denote the difference of accent by more than two different signs. Thus:

The evil that men dó lives after thém,

The good is oft interred with their bones.

Julius Cæsar.

Such distinctions, however, are a matter of taste, and different readers would render the lines somewhat differently. Probably the last line in the following couplet would be admitted by all to have five emphatic accents:

Should at my feet the world's great master fall,
Himself, his throne, his world, I'd scőrn 'em all.

In the following, the unaccented syllables are, many of them, as emphatic as the accented :—

Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death.

MILTON.

107. The number of unaccented syllables in each foot is not invariable, even in the same metre. Strictly, there should be (a) one unaccented syllable in each foot of dissyllabic metre; and (b), in each foot of trisyllabic metre, two.

(b) The latter limit (see 98) is never exceeded: three unaccented syllables cannot be found together in any English

metre, if they are all fully pronounced. But son have an iamb for an anapæst in trisyllabic metr instead of two unaccented syllables. Thus :

The poplars are félled, farewell to the shade

Co

i. Monosyllabic feet for dissyllabic; but this i ii. Trisyllabic feet for dissyllabic:

This is much more common, but it is not practised in nately. Rules regulating the practice will be m hereafter. (See 94.) This use of trisyllabic feet add to the variety and expressiveness of the dissyllabic me is rejected by the symmetry of epigram, but is ad adapted for dramatic verse.

The right of ignoring the number of syllables in provided that the number of accents is complete, is enu and claimed by Coleridge in the preface to "Chris His words are these: "The metre is founded on a new ciple, that of counting in each line the accents, not the bles. Though the latter may vary from seven to twel in each line the accents will be found to be only four." it appears that even in the fullest adoption of the licen extra syllables, Coleridge never exceeds twelve syllable four accents; i.e., three syllables to an accent, which rule laid down above. A fourth syllable cannot be ins unless it is completely suppressed in pronunciation.

"'tis," nor could he have inserted an unemphatic monosyllable; e.g., "long," before "night," as in the following line : —

It is the middle of the long night | by yonder cást|le clock.

This would have been intolerable. The metre would have degenerated into rhythm, and the poetry into prose. It should be added that the principle here enunciated by Coleridge as new is very old: upon it is based the alliterative poetry of early English, as will be seen hereafter.

66

Dissyllabic metre may con-
Hence we cannot always

108. The Prevalent Foot. tain trisyllabic feet, and vice versa. at once determine whether a metre is intended to be trisyllabic or dissyllabic. The metre is determined by the prevalent foot, and that cannot always be ascertained till a few lines have been read. Thus in Michael Drayton's "Agincourt" we might read the first three lines, and not perceive the metre till the fourth:

Fair stood the wind for France,

When we our sails advance,
Nor now to prove our chance,
Longer will tarry.

Here it might naturally be supposed, from the first three lines, that the second-dissyllabic metre with three accents was intended; but the fourth line, which is clearly trisyllabic, makes it doubtful whether the first three lines should not be treated as trisyllabic with two accents:

Fáir stood the wind for France.

The metre seems to be the same as―

Again, in Cowper's beautiful trisyllabic poem, "The Poplar Field," it would be possible, but for the prevalence of the trisyllabic foot, to scan the following line dissyllabically, using the ordinary dramatic license of contraction :

And now i' th' gráss | behold | they 're láid.

But the prevalence of the trisyllabic foot makes it obvious that

we must scan

And now | in the gráss | behold | they are láid.

109. Rhyme.Syllables are said to rhyme when they are identical from the vowel to the end. Syllables altogether identical do not rhyme, nor syllables in which the vowel is different; e.g., confine and define do not rhyme, nor do height and straight, though they have four letters identical, but sky and try rhyme, though they have only one.

But as rhyme is intended to gratify the ear, not the eye, when words are pronounced in one way and spelled in another their rhymes are the words which correspond with them in pronunciation, not in spelling. Thus weight does not rhyme with height, and does rhyme with straight, wait, and date. This rule is broken in the following:

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