Andersen. — Clrn^xifr.nfion of Verse. 485 



•can be certain the lines should, be read, )iot in iambic, but in trochaic 

 measure. 



11. Seeing, then, the absolutely interchangeable mature of these measures 

 in poems like Milton's " L'AllegTo " and, " II Penseroso " — remembering, 

 too, the important fact that when a trochaic line follows one ending 

 Avith a stressed, syllable it is always divid,ed, from that syllable by an un- 

 doubted, pause, and. that when this pause, as is often the case, is filled with 

 the syllable of a feminine ending the two hnes run on as one — it appears to 

 be beyond doubt that the names '" iambic " and " trochaic " have been 

 applied to one and the same metre, whose loords may have a peculiar lilt, 

 such lilt being imparted to them by their syntactic construction, and not 

 by the rhythm in which they float. It is due to a misdii'ected zeal that a 

 false standard has been established requiring the syllabic form of poems 

 to coiiform with one or other of two " ideals," iambic or trochaic. The 

 standard is, however, cumbered with permitted Ucenses. For instance, 

 trochaic measure, which in its perfect form should throughout run in 

 the form of the first two lines of example (15), is alloAved the license of 

 dropping the last and unaccented syllable of each Hne — is licensed, in fact, 

 to become iambic, a license of which it makes use most freely ; again, 

 iambic measure is allowed the license of dropping an occasional opening 

 Tinaccented syllable — is licensed, in other words, to become trochaic. 

 AMi,at does this mean more than that the same metre is appearing now in 

 one form, now in the other, according as the syntactic construction, which 

 is the visible and audible index, may direct ? 



Section II. 



1. The two fundamental " two-syllabled feet " having been reduced 

 to one simple unit with its stress on the second syllable, the three " three- 

 syllabled feet " — viz., anapest, amphibrach, and dactyl — may now be taken 

 into consideration. 



2. The first three lines of the lyric opening Byron's " The Bride of 

 Abydos " have been quoted by prosodists as examples of the three three- 

 syllabled metres resulting from the use of anapestic, amphibrachic, and 

 dactylic feet respectively : — 



(1.) Know ye the/ land where the/ cypress and/ myrtle 



Are emblems/ of deeds that/ are done in/ their clime. 

 Where the rage/ of the viil/ture, the love/ of the tur/tle, 

 [Now melt in/to sorrow/ now madden/ to crime ?] 



Taking each line as an entity, and numbering of! from the beginning, the 

 lines have been split into three-syllabled units, or feet, the first line 

 containing dactyls, or feet stressed on the first syllable ; the second line 

 Amphibrachs, or feet stressed on the second syllable ; the third line 

 anapests, or feet stressed on the third syllable. The fourth line is of 

 the same construction as the second. It will be noted that each line 

 tails off with a mutilated foot. Edgar Allan Poe was the first to point 

 out the fallacy of the above division. He showed that the hnes, though 

 dividing in this mutilated way fn the eye. flowed on unbrokenly to the ear 

 when read aloud. In fact, the ear suggested a difierent division ; and were 

 it not for the syntactic construction it would be impossible to say where 

 one metre ended and the other be2:an. 



3. As in the case of duple metre discussed in Section I, each line as 

 printed in example (1) of this section is only a half-verse; the lines may 



