"Touch her not scornfully."

_An Amphibrach is a three-syllable foot accented on the middle syllable._ It is uncommon. Example:--

"Three fishers went sailing out into the West."

_An Anapest is a three-syllable foot accented on the last syllable._ Example:--

"It was many and many a year ago."

A Spondee is a very uncommon foot in English. It consists of two long syllables accented about equally. It occurs as an occasional foot in a four-syllable rhythm. No English poem is entirely spondaic. The four-syllable foot and the spondee are so uncommon that there is little use in the pupil's knowing more than that there are such things. The example below is quoted from Lanier's "The Science of English Verse."

^ ^ ^ ^ e e e e q e e q q "Ah, the autumn days fade out, and the nights grow chill ^ ^ ^ ^ e e e e e e e e q q And we walk no more to gether as we used of yore When the rose was new in blossom and the sun was on the hill, And the eves were sweetly vocal with the happy whippoorwill, And the land-breeze piped its sweetest by the ocean shore."

Kinds of Metre.

_A verse is a single line of poetry._ It may contain from one foot to eight feet.

_A line made of one foot is called monometer._ It is never used throughout a poem, except as a joke, but it sometimes occurs as an occasional verse in a poem that is made of longer lines. The two lines which follow are from the song of "Winter" in Shakespeare's "Love's Labour's Lost." The last is monometer.

"Then nightly sings the staring owl Tu-whit."

_A line containing two feet is called dimeter._ It also is uncommon; but it does sometimes make up a whole poem; as, "The Bridge of Sighs,"

already mentioned. Another example is:--

^ ^ "I'm wearing awa', Jean, ^ ^ Like snaw when it's thaw, Jean, ^ ^ I'm wearing awa'

^ ^ To the land o' the leal."

It is frequently met as an occasional line in a poem. Wordsworth's "Daisy" shows it.

"Bright _Flower!_ for by that name at last, When all my reveries are past, I call thee, and to that cleave fast, Sweet, silent creature!

That breath'st with me in sun and air, Do thou, as thou art wont, repair My heart with gladness, and a share Of thy meek nature!"

_A line containing three feet is called trimeter._ Example:--

^ ^ ^ "The snow had begun in the gloaming, ^ ^ ^ And busily all the night ^ ^ ^ Had been heaping field and highway ^ ^ ^ With a silence deep and white."

_A line containing four feet is called tetrameter._ "Marmion" is written in tetrameters. See the extract on p. 276.

_A line containing five feet is called pentameter._ This line is very common in English poetry. It gives room enough for the poet to say something, and is not so long that it breaks down with its own weight.

Shakespeare's Plays, Milton's "Paradise Lost," Tennyson's "Idylls of the King,"--indeed, most of the great, serious work of the master-poets has been done in this verse.

_A line containing six feet is called hexameter._ This is the form adopted in the Iliad and the Odyssey of the Greeks, and the aeneid of the Romans; it has been used sometimes by English writers in treating dignified subjects. "The Courtship of Miles Standish" and "Evangeline"

are written in hexameter.

Verses of seven and eight feet are rare; they are called heptameter and octameter, respectively. The heptameter is usually divided into a tetrameter and a trimeter; the octameter, into two tetrameters. Poe's "Raven" and Tennyson's "Locksley Hall" are in octameters, and Bryant's "The Death of the Flowers" is in heptameters.

A verse is named from its prevailing kind of foot and the number of feet. For example, "The Merchant of Venice" is in iambic pentameter, and "The Courtship of Miles Standish" is in dactylic hexameter.

Stanzas.

A stanza is a group of verses, but these verses are not necessarily of the same length. Monometer, dimeter, and trimeter are not often used for a whole stanza; but they are frequently found in a stanza, introducing variety into it. A stanza made up of tetrameter alternating with trimeter is very common. The stanzas from "Annabel Lee" and "The Village Blacksmith," found on pages 278 and 279, are excellent examples.

Scansion.

_Scansion is the separation of a verse of poetry into its component feet._ Poetry was originally sung or chanted by bards and troubadours.

The accompaniment was a simple strumming on a harp of very few strings, and was hardly more than the beating of time. The chanting must have been much like the sing-song that some people fall into when reading verses now. The first thing in scanning a line of poetry is to drop into its rhythm,--to let it sing itself. When the regular accent is felt, the lines can easily be separated into their metrical feet.

Read these lines from "Marmion," and mark only the accented syllables.

^ ^ ^ ^ "And there she stood so calm and pale, ^ ^ ^ ^ That but her breathing did not fail, And motion slight of eyes and head, And of her bosom, warranted That neither sense nor pulse she lacks, You might have thought a form of wax Wrought to the very life was there; So still she was, so pale, so fair."

The marked verses have an accented syllable preceded by an unaccented syllable. Such a foot is iambic. There are four feet in each verse; so the poem is written in iambic tetrameter. In the same way, one decides that "The Song of Hiawatha" is written in trochaic tetrameter.

Variations in Metres.

In music the bar or measure is not always filled with exactly the same kind of notes arranged in the same order. If the signature reads 3/8, the measure may be filled by any notes that added together equal three eighth notes. It may be a quarter and an eighth, an eighth and a quarter, a dotted quarter, or three eighth notes. So, in poetry the verses are not always as regular as in "Marmion" and "Hiawatha,"

although poetry is more regular than music and there are usually few variations of metre in any one poem. A knowledge of the most common forms of variation is necessary to correct scansion.

The commonest variation in verse is the substitution of three eighths for the quarter and the eighth, or the eighth and the quarter. And the very opposite of this often occurs; that is, the substitution of the two-syllable foot for the three-syllable foot. The following, from "The Burial of Sir John Moore," illustrates what is done. Notice, however, that the beat is quite regular, and the lines lilt along as if there were no change.

^ ^ ^ ^ e e e e q e e e e e e "Not a drum was heard, not a fun eral note, ^ ^ ^ e e e e e e e e e [e] As his corse to the ram part we hur[ried]; ^ ^ ^ ^ e e e e e e e q e q Not a sol dier discharged his fare well shot ^ ^ ^ e e e e e e e e e [e] O'er the grave where our he ro we bur[ied]."

In reading this the first time, a person is not likely to notice that there are three feet in it containing but two syllables. The rhythm is perfectly smooth, and cannot be called irregular. The accent remains on the last syllable of the foot.

In the following selection from "Evangeline," trochees are substituted for dactyls, yet there is no break in the rhythm. It does not seem in the least irregular.

^ ^ ^ q e e e e q e "Be hind them followed the watch-dog, ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ q e e e e e e e e e e e e e q e Patient, full of im portance, and grand in the pride of his instinct, Walking from side to side with a lordly air, and superbly Waving his bushy tail, and urging forward the stragglers."

These examples are enough to illustrate the fact that one kind of foot may be substituted for another and not make the rhythm feel irregular.

So long as the accent is not changed from the first syllable to the last, or from the last to the first, there is no jar in the flow of the lines. _The trochee and the dactyl are interchangeable; and the iambus and the anapest are interchangeable._

We may take a step further. There are many times when some sudden change of thought, some strong emotion forces a poet to break the smooth rhythm, that the verses may harmonize with his feeling. Such a variation is like an exclamation or a dash thrown into prose. The following is taken from "Annabel Lee." The regular foot has the accent on the last syllable. It is anapestic, in tetrameters and trimeters.

But note the shudder in the third line when the accent is changed on the word "chilling." The music and the thought are in perfect harmony.

"And this was the reason that, long ago, In this kingdom by the sea, ^ ^ ^ ^ e q e q e e e q e A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling My beautiful Annabel Lee; So that her highborn kinsman came And bore her away from me To shut her up in a sepulchre In this kingdom by the sea."

Another beautiful example is found in the last stanza of the same poem. It is in the first two feet of the fifth line. Here the regular accent has yielded to an accent on the middle syllable and there are two amphibrachs. Notice, too, how it is almost impossible to tell in the next foot whether the accent goes upon the second or upon the third syllable. It is hovering between the form of the first two feet and the anapest of the last foot.

"For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ e e e e e e e e e e e e And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling--my darling--my life and my bride, In her sepulchre there by the sea In her tomb by the sounding sea."

As has already been said, the iambus is the common foot of English verse. It is made of a short and a long syllable. At the beginning of a poem an unaccented syllable seems weak; and so very frequently the first foot of a poem is trochaic; often the first two or three feet are of this kind. At such a place the irregularity does not strike one. The following is an illustration:--

^ ^ ^ ^ q e e q e q e q "Under a spread ing chest nut tree ^ ^ ^ e q e q e q The vil lage smith y stands; The smith, a mighty man is he, With large and sinewy hands; And the muscles of his brawny arms Are strong as iron bands."

In this stanza the prevailing foot is iambic, but the first foot is trochaic. In the following beautiful lines by Ben Jonson, there is the same thing:--

^ ^ ^ ^ q e e q e q e q "Drink to me on ly with thine eyes And I will pledge with mine; Or leave a kiss but in the cup And I'll not look for wine.

The thirst that from the soul doth rise Doth ask a drink divine; But might I of Jove's nectar sup, I would not change for thine."

A similar substitution may occur in any other verse of the stanza; but we feel the change more than when it is found in the first verse. The second stanza of Jonson's song furnishes an example of the substitution of a trochee for an iambus:--