ing: dreeming, growing: flowing); but even here less than 40%. In blank verse feminine ending is more frequent (§ 216 ff.), since there is no rime. § 204. Rising and Falling (iambic and trochaic) Rhythm. The presence or absence of the anacrusis depended on the choice of the poet not only in the OE. and ME. alliterative verse, but also in the ME. rimed verse of equal bars; the verse began with the first stressed syllable and had a trochaic character (§ 123). Gower was the first always to use the anacrusis in the short rimed couplet (§ 185), and Hoccleve in the heroic verse (§ 196); and Chaucer generally uses it. In this way the anacrusis became a real part of the verse, and Chaucer's verse is mainly iambic according to the grouping of the words (§ 182. 189). In NE. the anacrusis is rarely omitted; the ME. verses of four and five beats are in NE. always iambic: xxxxxxxx There is another group of verses in NE., which always begin with a stressed syllable, and thus are clearly trochaic or falling: xxxxxxxxl etc. (§ 221). But these two types of verse, the iambic and the trochaic, and further the anapaestic and the dactylic (§ 222 f.), are held apart; the verses of the same poem can no longer, as in ME., begin either with a stressed or with an unstressed syllable according to the poet's whim. But in the nineteenth century Coleridge, Scott, Byron and others attempted to imitate the greater freedom of the ME. short rimed couplet not only in the use of two consecutive unstressed syllables, but also in the use of the anacrusis. § 205. The Influence of Foreign Models on the Development of Modern English Prosody. The influence of French and Italian verse caused English poets to aim at a greater regularity of rhythmical structure. Wyatt and Surrey adopted new stanza-forms from Italian poetry in the first half of the sixteenth century, which are still much used, terza rima, ottava rima and the sonnet (§ 248 f.). Imitations of French stanzas (Ballade, Rondeau, Triolet etc. § 250) were rarer. Still greater, however, was the influence of classical measures, especially of the hexameter. The attempts to write English quantitative verse, especially the quantitative hexameter (§ 224), met with no success, because the differences in quantity in NE. are not so marked as in Latin and Greek, and the word-accent and sentence-accent in NE. cannot give way to the verse-accent as in Latin and Greek. But attempts to imitate classical metres resulted in an unrimed verse, blank verse, which became very important for English drama, and was later used also in narrative and descriptive poems. § 206. Word-stress and Verse-stress. Inverted Accent. Hovering Accent. The rhythm of NE. verse depends on a regular interchange of stressed and unstressed syllables; it rises (iambic rhythm: ×××× etc.) or falls (trochaic rhythm xxlxxl etc.); cp. § 204. The stressed and unstressed syllables generally occur singly; but there are verses, where two consecutive unstressed syllables may occur (iambic-anapaestic and trochaic-dactylic rhythm, (x)××1(x)××1 etc., xx(x)*x(x) etc.; cp. § 222 f.). The stressed syllable and unstressed syllable or syllables together (arsis and thesis) form a foot or bar: xx iamb; Ixx trochee; xxx anapaest; xxx dactyl. The individual bars of the verse must occupy about the same time-interval (§ 209). The arses, of course, generally consist of strongly stressed syllables, and the theses of weakly stressed or unstressed syllables. Although the arses of the verse are theoretically equal, yet the stresses differ considerably in strength according to the classes of words and the sentence structure. It is the poet's task so to arrange his words that neither the scheme of the verse is obscured nor the natural word-stress and sentence-stress suppressed. In fact the charm of modern verse lies in this conflict between word-accent and verse-accent, in the attempt of the poet to bring these into harmony; cp. Alden, Engl. Verse, p. 394. Thus not only the root-syllables of strongly stressed words (nouns, adjectives, numerals, verbs) can compose an arsis of the verse, but also, as in Chaucer (§ 190), weakly stressed words: pronouns, prepositions etc., even the and a, and also the weakly stressed syllables of polysyllables; otherwise many words would be impossible in verse. "All that is needed is that the stressed syllables shall be distinguished from the unstressed syllables" (Parsons p. 69). These weakly stressed syllables compose a full beat of the verse, and we must not with some English writers on prosody read verses such as Angels and ministèrs of grace defend us A sight so touching in his majesty etc. with four or three beats by neglecting the syllables with a slight stress. But, on the other hand, we must not emphasize such syllables (Parsons, p. 70). Strongly stressed words, e.g. nouns and adjectives, may be used in the thesis. When in this case the arses contain strongly stressed words, the rhythm of the verse becomes slow, but is not essentially altered: Friends, Romans, country-men, lend me your ears, Streams, winds, woods, flowers, fields, mountains, yea, the sea, so, too, when the adjective is in the thesis and the noun in the arsis, e.g. Good friends, sweet friends, Dear Gód, brief hours, sweet beaúty, great Caesar, Wild spirit etc. On the other hand the scheme of the verse is disturbed, when in the latter case the article is in the preceding arsis: in the warm áir, on the blue súrface, like á tired child, If I were á dead leaf etc.; in this case some assume a 'double iamb', consisting of two unstressed and two stressed syllables: ×××× (in the wárm áir, on the blue surface, like a tired child etc.); but in reading one will make neither the verse-accent nor the word-accent too prominent, but soften the conflict between them by 'hovering accent'. Often at the beginning of the verse or after a masculine caesura the first syllable is more strongly stressed than the second, so that the expected iamb becomes a trochee: |x|xx|. This is called 'inverted accent'. cp.: Éarth has not anything to show more fair, Dúll would he bé of soul who could pass by, Néver did sún more beautifully steep, fámine is ín thy cheeks, Néed and oppréssion starveth in thy eyes, Nay, answer me, stánd and unfold yourself Friends, Romans, country-men, lénd me your éars etc. Here, too, the conflict between the word-accent and verse-accent must be softened by 'hovering accent', i.e. a fairly equal distribution of the stress on the first two syllables. This is easier in those |