Ais^'DERSEisr. — Class/ fc'ifio/i of Verse. 489 



— the metre breaks down ; it becomes ampliibrachic, intermediate between 

 dactylic and anapestic. 



8. As in Byron's lyric, so in Moore's " Sound tlie Loud Timbrel," the 

 three metres are mixed : — 



(17.) Praise to the CoiKiueror. piai.se to the Lord ! 



Hi.s word was our arrow, His breath wa.s our sword. 

 Who shall return to tell Egypt the story 



Of tho.se .she sent forth in the hour of her pride ? 

 For the Lord hath looked out from His pillar of glory, 

 And all her brave thousands are dash'd in the tide. 

 Sound the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea ! 

 Jehovah hath triumphed ; His people are free. 



Here lines 3 to 6 are identical with quotation (1) in tliis section, so-called 



•dactyl, amphibrach and anapest following one another and dovetailing 



perfectly. 



9. Prosodists allow dactylic verse two licenses : the last two vmac- 

 c-ented syllables may be dropped, so that the verse ends on a stress, and 

 it may "be preceded by an unaccented syllable. By the examples from 

 Byron and Moore, (I) and (17), it will be seen that it may also be preceded 

 by two unaccented syllables. What results ? By allowing the dactylic 

 verse these hcenses it is allowed. to become an anapestic verse — aeon- 

 summation towards which it is perpetually struggling. The conclusion 

 then appears inevitable : ' The ending on a stressed syllable, and the pre- 

 fixing of unaccented syllables, are not so much licenses as assertions of the 

 natural type : the metre is doing its utmost to revert — a constantly recurring 

 act in all artificial forms throughout living nature. In the quotation above 

 (17) it will be observed that after each of the first two lines there is a pause, 

 as also after the sixth and seventh. These pauses take the places of syllables 

 that have been dropped ; the syllables are present in the third to fifth lines, 

 hence their unbroken swing. Restore the syllables throughout, and what 

 is the result ? Either the whole stanza is in dactyls minus the last two 

 unaccented syllables, or in anapests minus the first two, or in amphibrachs 

 minus the first and the last. Is it not, then, supererogative to give three 

 names to what is practically the same metre 1 — and for the same reason 

 that all duple metre is more naturally iambic than trochaic, all triple metre 

 is more naturallv anapestic than either amphibrachic or dactylic. 



Section 111. 



1. Having oftered reasons for reducing the number of constituent units 

 of British metre to two normal basic units, two-syllabled and three-syllabled, 

 or duple and triple, it remains to consider the relationship of these two 

 ■each to the other. It has been maintained that each has its own pecuhar 

 " effect "" ; that the " time " of duple metre differs from the " time " of 

 triple metre in the same manner that march-time ditt'ers from waltz-time ; 

 that the two do not naturally mingle in one metrical scheme, but that where 

 they do occur together the triple unit becomes a " triplet," of a nature 

 different from the triple unit when it occurs unmixed with the duple. 



2. In any poem that may be examined some fines will appear syllabically 

 fuller than others. Quoting again from '" L' Allegro," the line, 



(1.) Aiid fresh-l)lo\\u roses wash'd in dew. 

 is fuller than the line, 



l2.j To live with her, and live with thee 



