(a) Anacrusis or feminine ending,
 (b) Catalexis (or truncation),
 (c) Substitution of exceptional feet for the typical foot,
 (d) Pauses other than the cesural.
One-stress iambic.
Thus I
 Pass by
 And die
 As one
 Unknown
 And gone.

(Herrick: Upon his Departure Hence. 1648.)

(In combination with two-stress and three-stress:)

No more I'll vaunt,
 For now I see
 Thou only hast the power
 To find
 And bind
 A heart that's free,
 And slave it in an hour.

(Herrick: His Recantation. 1648.)

Two-stress iambic.
Most good, most fair,
 Or things as rare
 To call you 's lost;
 For all the cost
 Words can bestow
 So poorly show,...

(Drayton: Amouret Anacreontic. ab. 1600.)

Because I do
 Begin to woo,
 Sweet singing Lark,
 Be thou the clerk,
 And know thy when
 To say Amen.

(Herrick: To the Lark. 1648.)

The raging rocks,
 And shivering shocks,
 Shall break the locks
 Of prison-gates;
 And Phibbus' car
 Shall shine from far,
 And make and mar
 The foolish Fates.

(Shakspere: Bottom's song in Midsummer Night's Dream, I. ii. ab. 1595.)

(In combination with three-stress:)

Only a little more
 I have to write;
 Then I'll give o'er,
 And bid the world good-night.
'Tis but a flying minute
 That I must stay,
 Or linger in it;
 And then I must away.

(Herrick: His Poetry his Pillar. 1648.)

In the second stanza we have the same measure with feminine ending.

(In combination with four-stress:)

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown,
 Thus unlamented let me die;
 Steal from the world, and not a stone
 Tell where I lie.

(Pope: Ode on Solitude. ab. 1700.)

Two-stress trochaic.
Could I catch that
 Nimble traitor,
 Scornful Laura,
 Swift-foot Laura,
 Soon then would I
 Seek avengement.

(Campion: Anacreontics, in Observations in the Art of English Poesie. 1602.)

(In combination with four-stress:)

Dust that covers
 Long dead lovers
 Song blows off with breath that brightens;
 At its flashes
 Their white ashes
 Burst in bloom that lives and lightens.

(Swinburne: Song in Season.)

(Catalectic, and in combination with three-stress:)

Summer's crest
 Red-gold tressed,
 Corn-flowers peeping under;—
 Idle noons,
 Lingering moons,
 Sudden cloud,
 Lightning's shroud,
 Sudden rain,
 Quick again
 Smiles where late was thunder.

(George Eliot: Song from The Spanish Gypsy, Bk. i. 1868.)

The trochaic measures in The Spanish Gypsy are in imitation of the similar forms in Spanish poetry. See p. 114, below.

Two-stress anapestic.

(In combination with three-stress:)

Like a gloomy stain
 On the emerald main
 Alpheus rushed behind,—
 As an eagle pursuing
 A dove to its ruin
 Down the streams of the cloudy wind.

(Shelley: Arethusa. 1820.)

(With feminine ending:)

He is gone on the mountain,
 He is lost to the forest,
 Like a summer-dried fountain,
 When our need was the sorest.
 The font, reappearing,
 From the raindrops shall borrow,
 But to us comes no cheering,
 To Duncan no morrow!

(Scott: Coronach, from The Lady of the Lake, Canto 3. 1810.)

(In combination with four-stress:)

Fear death?—to feel the fog in my throat,
 The mist in my face.
 When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
 I am nearing the place,
 The power of the night, the press of the storm,
 The post of the foe;
 Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
 Yet the strong man must go.

(Browning: Prospice. 1864.)

These specimens, as is usual in anapestic verse, show considerable freedom in the treatment of the part of the foot containing the light syllables, substituted iambi being very common. Note the iambi in the Shelley stanza, line 1, second foot, and line 5, first foot. In the latter case, however, the first light syllable of line 5 is really supplied by the syllable added to make the feminine ending of line 4. In like manner, in the Scott stanza, the first syllable of line 8 is really supplied by the -ing of line 7; and where we have both feminine ending (in line 1) and a full anapest following, the effect is that of a hypermetrical syllable which must be hurried over in the reading. In the specimen from Browning we find an iambus in the opening foot in lines 2 and 6 (also, of course, in lines 1 and 5).

Two-stress dactylic.
One more Unfortunate,
 Weary of breath,
 Rashly importunate,
 Gone to her death!
Take her up tenderly,
 Lift her with care;
 Fashioned so slenderly,
 Young, and so fair!

(Thomas Hood: The Bridge of Sighs. ab. 1830.)

Here the alternate lines are catalectic, both light syllables being wanting.

Cannon to right of them,
 Cannon to left of them,
 Cannon in front of them
 Volley'd and thunder'd;
 Storm'd at with shot and shell,
 Boldly they rode and well,
 Into the jaws of Death,
 Into the mouth of Hell
 Rode the six hundred.

(Tennyson: Charge of the Light Brigade. 1854.)

Here the fourth and ninth lines are catalectic.

Loudly the sailors cheered
 Svend of the Forked Beard,
 As with his fleet he steered
 Southward to Vendland;
 Where with their courses hauled
 All were together called,
 Under the Isle of Svald
 Near to the mainland.

(Longfellow: Saga of King Olaf, xvii. 1863.)

In the reading of these stanzas from Tennyson and Longfellow there is so marked a stress on the final syllable as to make the second dactyl (except in the opening lines of the Tennyson stanza) more like a Cretic (in the classical terminology); i.e. a foot made up of two heavy syllables with a light syllable between them. But no such foot is generally recognized in English verse.

Two-stress irregular.
On the ground
 Sleep sound:
 I'll apply
 To your eye,
 Gentle lover, remedy.
 When thou wak'st,
 Thou tak'st
 True delight
 In the sight
 Of thy former lady's eye.

(Shakspere: Puck's Song in Midsummer Night's Dream, III. ii. ab. 1595.)

What I hate,
 Be consecrate
 To celebrate
 Thee and Thy state,
 No mate
 For Thee;
 What see
 For envy
 In poor me?

(Browning: Song in Caliban upon Setebos. 1864.)

In the usual printing of Caliban upon Setebos this song is brought into the form of the five-accent lines. It is evidently intended, however, to be read in two-accent groups. Professor Moulton has remarked interestingly that Browning gives the unique figure of Caliban not only a grammar but a prosody of his own.

Though my rime be ragged,
 Tattered and jagged,
 Rudely raine-beaten,
 Rusty and moth-eaten;
 If ye take wel therewith,
 It hath in it some pith.

(John Skelton: Colyn Cloute. ab. 1510.)

This is a specimen of what Mr. Churton Collins calls "that headlong voluble breathless doggrel which, rattling and clashing on through quick-recurring rhymes, ... has taken from the name of its author the title of Skeltonical verse." (Ward's English Poets, vol. i. p. 185.) The number of accents, as well as the number of syllables, is irregular, being quite as often (perhaps more often) three as two.

Three-stress iambic.
O let the solid ground
 Not fail beneath my feet
 Before my life has found
 What some have found so sweet;
 Then let come what come may,
 What matter if I go mad,
 I shall have had my day.

(Tennyson: Song in Maud, xi. 1855.)

(In combination with verse of four, five, and six stresses:)

The Oracles are dumb;
 No voice or hideous hum
 Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving.
 Apollo from his shrine
 Can no more divine,
 With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving:
 No nightly trance or breathed spell
 Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.

(Milton: Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity. 1629.)

Here, in line 5, we have an instance of a verse truncated at the beginning,—rare in modern English poetry.

(With feminine ending:)

The mountain sheep are sweeter,
 But the valley sheep are fatter;
 We therefore deemed it meeter
 To carry off the latter.
 We made an expedition;
 We met an host and quelled it;
 We forced a strong position,
 And killed the men who held it.

(Thomas Love Peacock: War Song of Dinas Vawr, from The Misfortunes of Elphin. 1829.)

In line 2 is an instance of anacrusis.

Three-stress trochaic.

(In combination with iambic:)

Go where glory waits thee,
 But, while fame elates thee,
 Oh! still remember me.
 When the praise thou meetest
 To thine ear is sweetest,
 Oh! then remember me.

(Thomas Moore: Go Where Glory Waits Thee. ab. 1820.)

(In combination with six-stress verses:)

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
 Bird thou never wert,
 That from heaven, or near it,
 Pourest thy full heart
 In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
Higher still and higher
 From the earth thou springest,
 Like a cloud of fire
 The blue deep thou wingest,
 And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

(Shelley: To a Skylark. 1820.)

Here lines 2 and 4 are catalectic.

Three-stress anapestic.
I am monarch of all I survey;
 My right there is none to dispute;
 From the centre all round to the sea
 I am lord of the fowl and the brute.

(Cowper: Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk. 1782.)

In this specimen lines 2, 5, 6, and 8 show initial truncation, the first light syllable being missing.

(With two-stress verse:)

His desire is a dureless content,
 And a trustless joy;
 He is won with a world of despair
 And is lost with a toy....
But true love is a durable fire,
 In the mind ever burning,
 Never sick, never old, never dead,
 From itself never turning.

(Sir Walter Raleigh (?): Pilgrim to Pilgrim. In MS. Rawl. 85; in Schelling's Elizabethan Lyrics, p. 3.)

"The metres of the earlier years of Elizabeth's reign are so overwhelmingly iambic," Professor Schelling observes, "that this perfectly metrical, if somewhat irregular, anapæstic movement comes like a surprise. Professor Gummere, of Haverford College, calls my attention to three epigrams—printed among the poems of Raleigh, ed. Hannah, p. 55—all of them in more or less limping anapæsts, but not of this measure. It is quite possible that the time to which these verses were sung may have affected the measure." (Notes to Elizabethan Lyrics, pp. 211, 212.)

(With initial truncation:)

She gazed, as I slowly withdrew,
 My path I could hardly discern;
 So sweetly she bade me adieu,
 I thought that she bade me return.

(Shenstone: Pastoral Ballad. 1743.)

Mr. Saintsbury praises highly the anapests of Shenstone (Ward's English Poets, vol. iii. p. 272), saying that he "taught the metre to a greater poet than himself, Cowper, and these two between them have written almost everything that is worth reading in it, if we put avowed parody and burlesque out of the question." But this is probably to be regarded as overstating the case.

(With 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.)

Of this song Mr. Saintsbury says that it is "one of the rare examples of a real dactylic metre in English, where the dactyls are not, as usual, equally to be scanned as anapests." (Life of Dryden, Men of Letters Series, p. 62.) Here, as almost always in English, the measure is catalectic, a final dactyl being instinctively avoided, except in short two-stress lines.

Warriors and chiefs! should the shaft or the sword
 Pierce me in leading the host of the Lord,
 Heed not the corse, though a king's, in your path:
 Bury your steel in the bosoms of Gath!

(Byron: Song of Saul before his Last Battle. 1815.)

Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King,
 Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing:
 And, pressing a troop, unable to stoop
 And see the rogues flourish and honest folk droop,
 Marched them along, fifty-score strong,
 Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song.

(Browning: Cavalier Tunes. 1843.)

Here the metre is varied interestingly by pauses. Thus in lines 1 and 5 the light syllables of the second foot are wholly wanting.

Five-stress iambic.

(For specimens, see Part Two.)

Five-stress trochaic.
What, there's nothing in the moon noteworthy?
 Nay: for if that moon could love a mortal,
 Use, to charm him (so to fit a fancy),
 All her magic ('tis the old sweet mythos),
 She would turn a new side to her mortal,
 Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steersman—
 Blank to Zoroaster on his terrace,
 Blind to Galileo on his turret,
 Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats—him, even!

(Browning: One Word More. 1855.)

This is a rare specimen of unrimed verse in other than iambic rhythm.

(Catalectic:)

Then methought I heard a mellow sound,
 Gathering up from all the lower ground;
 Narrowing in to where they sat assembled
 Low voluptuous music winding trembled,
 Wov'n in circles: they that heard it sighed,
 Panted, hand-in-hand with faces pale,
 Swung themselves, and in low tones replied;
 Till the fountain spouted, showering wide
 Sleet of diamond-drift and pearly hail.

(Tennyson: The Vision of Sin. 1842.)

Five-stress anapestic.
As thy Love is discovered almighty, almighty be proved
 Thy power, that exists with and for it, of being beloved!
 He who did most, shall bear most; the strongest shall stand the most weak.
 'Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for! my flesh, that I seek
 In the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be
 A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me,
 Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever: a Hand like this hand
 Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ stand!

(Browning: Saul. 1845.)

Let it flame or fade, and the war roll down like a wind,
 We have proved we have hearts in a cause, we are noble still,
 And myself have awaked, as it seems, to the better mind;
 It is better to fight for the good than to rail at the ill;
 I have felt with my native land, I am one with my kind,
 I embrace the purpose of God, and the doom assign'd.

(Tennyson: Maud, III. vi. 1855.)

Here frequent iambi are substituted for anapests; as in line 1, second and fourth feet; lines 2 and 3, fifth foot; line 5, third foot.

Five-stress dactylic.

This form is almost unknown. In the following lines we find five-stress catalectic verse of dactyls and trochees combined:

Surely the thought in a man's heart hopes or fears
 Now that forgetfulness needs must here have stricken
 Anguish, and sweetened the sealed-up springs of tears.

(Swinburne: A Century of Roundels.)

Six-stress iambic.

(For specimens, see Part Two.)

Six-stress trochaic.

(With alternate lines catalectic:)

Day by day thy shadow shines in heaven beholden,
 Even the sun, the shining shadow of thy face:
 King, the ways of heaven before thy feet grow golden;
 God, the soul of earth is kindled with thy grace.

(Swinburne: The Last Oracle.)

Six-stress anapestic.
For I trust if an enemy's fleet came yonder round by the hill,
 And the rushing battle-bolt sang from the three-decker out of the foam,
 That the smooth-faced snubnosed rogue would leap from his counter and till,
 And strike, if he could, were it but with his cheating yard-wand, home.

(Tennyson: Maud, I. i. 1855.)

(See note on p. 41.)

All under the deeps of the darkness are glimmering: all over impends
 An immeasurable infinite flower of the dark that dilates and descends,
 That exalts and expands in its breathless and blind efflorescence of heart
 As it broadens and bows to the wave-ward, and breathes not, and hearkens apart.

(Swinburne: The Garden of Cymodoce, in Songs of the Springtides.)

Six-stress dactylic.

(For this, see chiefly Part Two.)

(Catalectic:)

Dosn't thou 'ear my 'erse's legs, as they canters awaay?
 Proputty, proputty, proputty—that's what I 'ears 'em saay.
 Proputty, proputty, proputty—Sam, thou's an ass for thy paains:
 Theer's moor sense i' one o' 'is legs nor in all thy braains.

(Tennyson: Northern Farmer—new style. ab. 1860.)

Thee I behold as a bird borne in with the wind from the west,
 Straight from the sunset, across white waves whence rose as a daughter
 Venus thy mother, in years when the world was a water at rest.

(Swinburne: Hesperia.)

Seven-stress iambic.
There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away
 When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay;
 'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone, which fades so fast,
 But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere youth itself be past.

(Byron: Stanzas for Music. 1815.)

Here we have anacrusis in lines 2 and 4.

Beyond the path of the outmost sun, through utter darkness hurled—
 Further than ever comet flared or vagrant star-dust swirled—
 Live such as fought and sailed and ruled and loved and made our world.

(Kipling: Wolcott Balestier.)

(See also under Seven-stress Verse, in Part Two.)

Seven-stress trochaic.

(Catalectic:)

Clear the way, my lords and lackeys, you have had your day.
 Here you have your answer, England's yea against your nay;
 Long enough your house has held you: up, and clear the way!

(Swinburne: Clear the Way.)

Seven-stress anapestic.

(With feminine ending:)

Come on then, ye dwellers by nature in darkness, and like to the leaves' generations,
 That are little of might, that are moulded of mire, unenduring and shadowlike nations,
 Poor plumeless ephemerals, comfortless mortals, as visions of creatures fast fleeing,
 Lift up your mind unto us that are deathless, and dateless the date of our being.

(Swinburne: The Birds, from Aristophanes.)

Of this translation Mr. Swinburne says that it was undertaken from a consideration of the fact that the "marvellous metrical invention of the anapestic heptameter was almost exactly reproducible in a language to which all variations and combinations of anapestic, iambic, or trochaic metre are as natural and pliable as all dactylic and spondaic forms of verse are unnatural and abhorrent." ... "I have not attempted," he says further, "the impossible and undesirable task of reproducing the rare exceptional effect of a line overcharged on purpose with a preponderance of heavy-footed spondees.... My main desire ... was to renew as far as possible for English ears the music of this resonant and triumphant metre, which goes ringing at full gallop as of horses who

'dance as 'twere to the music
 Their own hoofs make.'"

(Studies in Song, p. 68.)

Seven-stress dactylic.

This form of verse may be said to be wanting. Schipper quotes as possible examples some lines which (as he remarks) seem to be made merely for the metrical purpose:

"Out of the kingdom of Christ shall be gathered, by angels o'er Satan victorious,
 All that offendeth, that lieth, that faileth to honor his name ever glorious."

(Englische Metrik, vol. ii. p. 419.)

Eight-stress iambic.

This is almost unknown in English verse, because where conceivably occurring it shows an irresistible tendency to break up into two halves of four stresses each. William Webbe, in his Discourse of English Poetrie (1586), quoted these lines as "the longest verse in length which I have seen used in English":