Only by analysis of this kind can proper reading of the verse be even approximately represented. In the second line, for example, an "iambic" scansion would necessitate the subordination of the important word "gold" and a stress upon the article "the"! Obviously such an interpretation of verse is ridiculous and totally without vaiue. The monosyllabic foot is thus useful for the analysis of much verse in addition to that for which it is absolutely required.

USAGE

The poetic effect sought by the use of monosyllabic feet seems more often to be definite than in the case of most other metrical variations. This may only be due, however, to the fact that the practice has not yet fully established itself. A metrist of 1822 reviewing the usage of trisyllabic substitution would probaly have declared it suited only for ballad imitation. To a metrist of 1922 similarly it must seem that in most cases the use of the monosyllabic foot carries with it the suggestion of popular-not to say vulgar-verse. In general at least this is true of meter which employs the monosyllabic foot in one of the type lines of popular usage. The poet may use such an instrument for a soldier's song, a chantey, a description of the crowd gathering at a race course, or an imitation of a Salvation Army meeting or negro revival. Even in this sort of verse, however, the usage is not universal, and Chesterton's Lepanto offers an example of such meter used for a subject of dignity. On the other hand, the occasional use of monosyllabic feet not in any type line occurs in poems of widely varying nature. Even at the present time no attempt at a general conclusion can be offered for this sort of verse.

The primary reason for the use of monosyllabic feet is of course the same as for any other metrical device-variety of rhythm for its own sake. Of the variations already considered the monosyllabic foot is, however, distinctly the strongest in effect, and does most violence to the usual structure of the verse. As a result it is more frequently used for onomatopoetic effect. This effect can usually be reduced to the emphasis which the stresses place upon a series of monosyllables. For such onamatopeia we may quote the refrain in Kipling's Cholera Camp:

We've ten more today!

and also from Noyes's Flos Mercatorum:

Bravely swelled his heart to see the moat of London glittering
Round her mighty wall-they told him-two miles long!

Chesterton's Lepanto also uses the monosyllabic foot for anomatopeia in such lines as,

Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard
Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far.

But as with all attempts to assign definite emotional effect to metrical variations, this attempt fails when applied with consistency. It is easy to pick out individual lines where the monosyllabic foot has a definite purpose, but it is impossible to go through a poem and assign some purpose to every example of such feet. Only occasionally are we under necessity of imitating

the sounding of war-gongs, or the awed voice reporting ten deaths. As with trisyllabic substitution the real purpose of monosyllabic feet must be sought in the closer relation of verse and ordinary speech.

As already suggested, the object of monosyllabic feet is to render with full value the monosyllabic units of the language, which are usually slighted in dissyllabic or trisyllabic verse. If we return for a moment to The Universal Prayer, it is easy to see that the practice of even the foremost Augustan poet made no great effort to have the meter of the poem conform to the logical emphasis of normal speech. He was in fact much more likely to do just the opposite, and by periodic style contort the form of natural speech to conform to the desired effect of meter and rhyme. Certainly his verse frequently calls for stress upon logically unimportant syllables, and vice versa places important words in a metrically unstressed position. Thus we have:

What Conscience dictates to be done,

and on the other hand:

Thou Great First Cause, least understood.

In the former line the unimportant word to stands in the position of metrical stress, while in the latter the important words First and least are in the unstressed position.

As we have seen, the technique of trisyllabic substitution tended to sift out the phrases which formed trisyllabic units, and use them as equivalents for the usual foot of two syllables. There resulted lines like,

And the owlet whoops to the wolf below.

By trisyllabic feet it was thus possible sometimes to remove the condition existing in the first type of line quoted from Pope. On the other hand the metrics of Coleridge and his successors made no provision for the situation arising in the second line, so that poetry stiil kept lines of the type,

Sure my kind saint took pity on me..

To a great extent the same condition has persisted until the present time. One of the results of the monosyllabic foot is, however, to do away with situations of this kind. When two or more marked stresses fall naturally together, verse making use of monosyllabic feet allows the full stress to fall upon such syllables. The lines quoted from Massey are an excellent illustration of this principle, while much of Masefield's work is equally careful in arrangement of syllables:

Tramping at night in the cold and wet, I passed a lighted inn,
And an old tune, a sweet tune, was being played within,

It was full of the laugh of the leaves, and the song the wind sings;

It brought the tears and the choked throat, and a catch to the heart-strings. -Personal.

There is little danger of misreading such verse. The four lines. mingle feet of one, two, and three syllables and use also one metrical pause; yet if the passage were printed as prose and read by a person not expecting verse, all the metrical variations could scarcely help falling into the proper relation. The reason is that in no case is metrical stress demanded

upon a syllable not ordinarily accented in speech, while on the other hand monosyllabic feet allow the full stress upon each important word.

The meter of the quoted lines represent a refinement of technique which few poets even of the present day have been able to reach, and which none has attempted to maintain for a long poem. The implications of such verse are distinctly realistic. Poetic composition no longer forces language into artificial form by distorting the stress and time values of idiomatic speech. The conventions of speech and of meter have been made coincident. Such verse stands as the natural end-point and the logical conclusion of a process begun by Southey and Coleridge and developed steadily since their time.

CONCLUSION

The monosyllabic foot is a practice, the origins of which are to be found in nursery rhymes and in verse written for music. Although common in popular poetry of certain kinds, it hardly appears in modern literary verse before 1820, and is of little importance until the opening of the twentieth century. The spread of the practice has been slow, owing largely to the inherent difficulties of its technique. The occurrence in succession of two strongly stressed syllables is a marked break with the tradition of versification. Time has been necessary to train writers in workmanship, and to adjust the ear of the reader to the new metrical situation. This difficulty on the part of the reader resulted at first in the adoption of different mechanical devices for pointing out the occurrence of the monosyllabic foot. There has also been much direct imitation of the line types of popular poetry. Technique has, however, come to rest principally upon the phonetic structure of the language. Important monosyllabic words are used for monosyllabic feet in the same way that trisyllabic words and groups of proclitics and enclitics are used for trisyllabic substitutions. The result produced is twofold. A new variation of meter is gained and a closer correspondence effected between the rhythm of verse and of natural speech.

CHAPTER VIII

DIPODIC VERSE

Dipodic verse is meter in which the time interval is measured by a compound unit of two ordinary feet alternately carrying a stronger and weaker stress. A regular dipodic foot may be represented by the notation:

The principal stress falls upon the first syllable and the secondary stress

upon

or an

the third. The question of a descending (=~=

<dipod is similar to that already

ascending (u=~=).

considered as to the simple foot. It will accordingly here be treated in a similar manner by considering for the purposes of notation all dipodic feet as descending. Kipling's Philadelphia offers a good example of a dipodic ballad couplet in a fairly regular form:

Now few will understand if you mention Talleyrand,
Or remember what his cunning and his skill did;

And the cabmen at the wharf do not know Count Zinnendorf,
Nor the Church in Philadelphia he builded.

~1-0-01-1-0 1-0-0

A more scientific description of dipodic verse might be that the second half-foot occupies a shorter time interval than the first. This difference of time is not, however, as perceptible to the ear as is the difference in stress.

1 In the dipodic anacrusis or following the pause after any primary stress, the first of two syllables is considered as carrying a secondary stress. This is done principally for simplicity of notation since such syllables are really doubtful. Double anacruses and feminine endings aid in the effect of dipodic verse, but are not essential.

The latter thus offers a better criterion of judgment, although the former may be scientifically more correct. For similar reasons the present study takes into consideration only such verse as is perceptibly of dipodic structure. There is experimental evidence that some English verse may be really dipodic which gives no such effect to the unaided senses. Phenomena of verse recognizable only through laboratory equipment are, however, impractical in a study approaching metrics from the point of view of the reader and the effect upon the ear. Verse will here be considered dipodic only when the nature of its language produces a situation which cannot well be otherwise explained.

Another question in the definition of dipodic verse is its distinction from verse of "paeanic" type. Kipling's Last Chantey, for example, might seem to represent the latter metrical form:

Calling to the Angels and the Souls in their degree.

There would always be good theoretical objections to the possibility of such tetrasyllabic feet used for continuous composition in English; almost certainly the inherent feeling for rhythm would enforce some kind of a secondary stress upon each third syllable. For practical purposes, however, there might not be any objection to such notation, were it not for the fact that no English poet has written such lines consistently. We have already seen that even regular trisyllabic verse strains the limits of the language with regard to the proportion of unstressed syllables. Regular tetrasyllabic verse would (outside of nonsense verse) be practically impossible for even a short passage, and, if so used, would certainly be an un-English mixture of polysyllables and connectives.

As an occasional variation the tetrasyllabic foot of paeanic type occurs, bet not frequently. Among modern poets Hilaire Belloc makes some use of it in ballad meter:

There is also an occasional foot of four syllables which might more aptly be called a dipod. This is distinctly an inheritance from verse meant for singing, as may be shown by comparison of the words and the music of the old song, The Broom of Cowdenknowes:

Oh, the broom, the bonny, bonny broom.

See Verrier: Metrique Anglaise, Vol. III, e.g. pp. 410-418.