Who is he that | cometh (With) bánner | ánd with | músic, (And) breaking | ón my | rést? TENNYSON. The extra syllable in the last example renders it possible to call the line iambic instead of trochaic; but the trochaic spirit is so clearly prevalent throughout the passage, that it seems better to call such lines irregular trochaics, treating the extra syllable as a "catch.” 1 The three-accent iambic is often used by Shakspeare for rapid retort, sometimes with rhyme: The three-accent iambic with alternate rhyme, though occasionally used in modern hymns, is somewhat monotonous. It is not uncommon in the poems of Surrey and Wyatt. Though I regarded not SURREY. 1 See paragraph 129. When two iambic three-accent lines have no marked pause between them, and the first line does not rhyme with the second, the two become one line with six accents, called an Alexandrine. The following is not only a specimen, but intended to be descriptive of the somewhat dragging effect of such a line: A needless Alexandrine ends the song, And, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along. POPE. Dryden freely intersperses it in his longer poems, generally at the end of a paragraph; Spenser inserts it at the end of each stanza in the "Faerie Queene." It is unfit for dramatic purposes, though sometimes used with rhyme, as by Peele, the contemporary of Shakspeare, in his "Arraignment of Paris." Shakspeare seldom uses it except where the pause is so marked as to make the line really two lines of three accents each. He introduces it into the mouth of ranting Pistol, and uses it for an inscription: Portia. Morocco. Now make your choice. The first, of gold, who this inscription bears, It is followed by a verse of seven accents in Alcibiades. [Reads the epitaph.] 'Here lies a wretched corse, of wretched soul bereft : Seek not my name: a plague consume you wicked caitiffs left." In Sir Thomas North's Plutarch, a book from which Shakspeare drew largely for the subjects of his plays, the Alexandrine metre is constantly employed to translate quotations and inscriptions; and this may have influenced Shakspeare in his use of this metre. Many apparent Alexandrines in Shakspeare are Alexandrines only in appearance. The three-accent rhyming couplet, used alternately with the three-accent non-rhyming couplet, becomes a spirited ballad metre in Lord Macaulay's "Battle of Naseby:" Their heads all stooping low, their points all of a row, The iambic three-accent verse has sometimes an extra syllable. This line is not often used unmixed. It precedes the shorter three-accent iambic, and is used seriously in the following: I fly to scenes romantic, Where never men resort, For in an age so frantic Impiety is sport. COWPER. When it follows the longer line of four accents, it generally has a comic effect, as in Patron of all those luckless brains That, to the wrong side leaning, Indite much metre with much pains, And little or no meaning. Ib. The same metre is used with the same effect by Tennyson in his "Will Waterproof" and "Amphion." The trochaic three-accent sometimes dispenses with the final unaccented syllable: Crabbed age and youth Cannot live together: Youth is full of pleasance, Age is full of care. The Passionate Pilgrim. In ballads and 133. Iambic verse with four accents is commonly used for ballad-narrative, as in Scott's Poems. hymns it is generally followed by a line of three accents, and the poems of Scott contain a few three-accent lines irregularly interspersed. Unmixed with other lines, the four-accent iambic is somewhat monotonous. There is a great difference between the earlier verses in this metre, written by Surrey and Wyatt, and the later metre of Scott. In the former the verse is generally split into two halves, as in the following anonymous poem from Tottel's Miscellany, 1557 a.d.:— The sun when he hath spread his rays To show the life that they are in. In the poem from which this extract is taken, out of the first forty-five verses only two are found without the division in the middle. Very different is the metre of Scott: With early dawn | Lord Marmion rose, And first the chapel doors unclose; Then after morning rites were done (A hasty mass | from Friar John), And knight and squire | had broke their fast Lord Marmion's bu gles blew to horse; Then came the stirrup cup in course No point of courtesy was lost. In fables and the lighter kind of narrative this metre often has interspersed lines with an extra syllable unaccented, as in Butler's "Hudibras:" Whose honesty they all would swear for, Though not a man of them knew wherefore. The extra syllable is rare in serious poetry. 134. The Trochaic verse of four accents was more common in the Elizabethan period than the iambic verse of four accents. The English tendency to throw back the accent in dissyllabic and other words facilitates the use of this metre. A great part of the "Allegro" and "Penseroso" is written in this metre: Straight mine éye hath caught new pleasures Well adapted for lively bustle, this metre does not suit a sober or quietly graceful subject; and the necessity of a double rhyme is a serious practical obstacle to its continuous use in a long poem. Hence, the final unaccented syllable is often dropped, and the result is a truncated trochaic metre, which is more common than the full trochaic. The following is an instance: Rússet láwns and fallows gray, Where the nibbling flocks do stráy. The addition of a monosyllable at the beginning of a trochaic line allows us to scan the truncated trochaic as iambic : |