THE VARIOUS MEASURES. Had' you been' as wise' as bold, Gray uses a variety of it for light effect: Thee' the voice', the dance' obey', 2. The Second, or Iambic, Measure. The strains' decay' And melt' | away' For in' my mind' | of all' | mankind' I love' | but you' | alone'— O Caledonia, stern' | and wild'— And found' | no end', | in wan' d'ring maʼzes lost'— 299 Such as' crea' tion's dawn' | beheld' | thou roll' est now— The spacious fir'|mament' | on high' | and all | the blue' | ethereal sky'. The Iambic measure is most easily kept up. It is therefore in very common use, and is peculiarly adapted for long poems. II. Trisyllabic Measures. 1. The Third, or Dactylic, Measure. Take' her up ten'derly, Lift' her with care' Thou' who art | bearing my buckler and | bow'— Spare' me, O great' Recollec'tion, for | words' to the task' were un e'qual. 2. The Fourth, or Amphibrachic, Measure. The Alps' and the snow My coursers are fed' with the light'ning, 3. The Fifth, or Anapæstic, Measure. To the fame' | of your name'— See the snakes' | that they rear, Shall victor exult,' | or in death' | be laid low', With his back' | to the field,' | and his feet' | to the foe'. All the Trisyllabic measures have a quicker movement than the Dissyllabic, owing to the greater number of unaccented syllables; they are characterized in the main by rushing impetuosity. Mention has been already made of their readiness to admit irregularities, and to change places. Indeed, they can scarcely be called distinct measures; thus the fourth, for example, shows clear traces of dactylic rhythm. We might scan the last-quoted specimen of it thus:: Thère came' to the shore' a poor | ex'ile of | Erin, The dew' on his | thin' robe lay | heav'y and | chill'— making the first syllables of the lines unemphatic, on the principle of the anacrusis, or back-stroke, of the classical metres. We have then verses of properly dactylic measure, the one line leading continuously on to the next. The rarity of the pure dactylic measure in English is no longer a matter of wonder, seeing it is thus found so often disguised. Coleridge's 'Christabel,' and some of Byron's poems, are written in a metre disposed in lines varying in length from seven to twelve syllables, but always containing four accented positions; thus: I won'der'd what' | might ail' | the bird'; For nothing near' | it could' | I see', Save the grass' | and green herbs' | underneath' | the old tree'. Though Coleridge called this a new principle, the only thing new was the systematic execution. THE PAUSES. I. The Final Pause.-The length of verse is determined by the number of 'measures'; and the number of measures going to any verse is determined by a distinguishable rest or pause of the voice. To justify this pause, there must be a break in the sense; not necessarily such a break as would demand a punctuation mark, but, at the least, the end of a word must be reached, and even to separate two words that are closely joined in a phrase is felt to be inelegant.* To exemplify, take Paradise Lost, III. 37: Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move * Dr. Edwin Guest, in A History of English Rhythms, has very fully developed this point; and, though instances can be cited against him from nearly all our poets, Mr. Joseph yet these instances make but a trifling proportion of any poet's verses. B. Mayor, in Chapters on English Metre, contests Dr. Guest's doctrine, but seems to confound two things that Dr. Guest expressly distinguished,--a metrical pause and a punctuation stop. THE PAUSES. Sings darkling, and, in shadiest covert hid, Tunes her nocturnal note. 301 'Move' and bird' both give a sufficient break; while 'hid' makes one marked enough to need a comma for gram matical purposes. Take another passage, from Mr. Swinburne's 'Atalanta in Calydon': These things are in my presage, and myself Am part of them and know not; but in dreams Six of these eight lines are cases of the purely metrical pause occurring at a point where the sense breaks, but not so as to need punctuation marks. No doubt Milton has lines like Now in loose garlands thick thrown off, the bright Pavement, that like a sea, &c. (Paradise Lost, III. 362) — where there is no such break in sense between the adjective bright' and its noun 'pavement' as to justify the final pause above defined; but there are few such lines in Milton, the vast majority following the canon now laid down. In Shakespeare, especially in the later plays, verses end with words that cannot, by any natural reading, be paused upon. In neighbouring lines of the Tempest,' we find and- I will resist such entertainment till Make not too rash a trial of him, for Further on, in the same play, we meet with— and Weigh'd between loathness and obedience, at * Byron is notorious for his carelessness in metre, and accordingly abounds in such lines. * Even at its best, the serious poetry of Byron is often so rough and loose, so weak in the screws and joints which hold together the framework of verse, that it is not easy to praise it enough without seeming to condone or to extenuate such faults as should not be overlooked or forgiven. (Swinburne.) Souls that dare look the Omnipotent tyrant in His everlasting face. (Cain.') Let him but vanquish, and Me perish! (Sardanapalus.') Be he richest of Such rank as is permitted. (Two Foscari.') And as For duty, as you call it. ('Werner.") A hateful and unsightly molehill to The eyes of happier men. ('Deformed Transformed.') That Byron, though indulging in this practice, was aware of its metrical impropriety, is shown by his conscious use of it in Don Juan for comic purposes. In the first stanza of the dedication, we meet Although 'tis true that you turn'd out a Tory at Throughout the poem, such pauses as the following are common :— Instead of quarrelling, had they' been both' in (I. 25.) Which ancient mass-books often are', and this' all And I must say, I ne'er could see the very Great happiness of the Nil Admirari. (V. 100.) Pity' that' so few' by Poets and private tutors are exposed. (V. 131.) There lies, yclept despatches, without risk or The singeing of a single inky whisker. (V. 151.) II. The Middle Pause, or Casura.-Every verse, or line, if it go beyond four 'measures' or accents, should have a rest to the voice about the middle; e.g., in an ordinary blank verse, this pause should divide it into two sections, one of two, and the other of three accents. Thus if one word contain three accents of the verse, that word must not occupy the centre, but come at the beginning or the end. In illustration, Shakespeare supplies a breach, and Matthew Arnold an example, of this rule, and that with the same word: THE CESURA. And what impossibility would slay-- 303 (All's well that ends well.') When true, the last impossibility. We are familiar with this pause, or Cæsura, in the common ballad metre of seven accents, where it is marked out by dividing each verse into two separate parts. In some early Elizabethan books of poetry, this form of printing was followed even in verses of only five accents. For the Cæsura, a slighter break in sense will often have to serve for the final pause: put negatively, the rule is that the Cæsura shall not occur in the middle of a word. There are far more violations of this rule to be found than of the rule of the Final Pause, due probably to the fact that the Cæsura has no longer any visible representation in printing. But attention to it is found prevalent in all melodious poets, when they deal in long verses; e.g., Tennyson in 'Locksley Hall'. These pauses, being rests from the effort of articulation, afford the means of getting over consonant clashes and vowel hiatuses; the rest coming in at that point gives time for easily shaping the vocal organs to pronounce the new consonant or vowel (see MELODY). This helps the difficulty in Gray's line : The lowing herd || winds slowly o'er the lea; 'rd' followed by 'w' is not a very easy combination, but the difficulty is concealed by the metrical pause between them. By this means also, two accented syllables may stand together, either inside a line, or at the end of one and the opening of the next; an arrangement that has a specific and appreciable effect. In the following lines from Paradise Lost (II. 106), this advantage and the former one are combined : He ended frowning, and his look denounced' From Lear,' we get this effect in Cæsura : Humanity must perforce' || prcy' on itself. A third point is that if the middle pause occur after an unaccented syllable, the measure following can more readily remain complete ; this is how, with the final pause also, an extra syllable may be attached to a line, and yet the following one open as if no departure from the regular form had been made. In 'King John' there occurs :Thou slave, thou wretch, thou cow'ard! Thou little valiant, great in villainy ! Of the Cæsural variety of this, Chaucer is full : Thou schul'dest nev'ere || out of this grovë' pace'. It is obvious that there may be great variety in the markedness of the sense break corresponding to these pauses, and also in the position |