time of the pause is counted in the metrical scheme. Pauses of this class correspond to rests in music; and as in the case of such rests, their occurrence is exceptional.

For him was lever have at his beddes heed

A Twenty bokes, clad in blak or reed.

(CHAUCER: Prologue to Canterbury Tales, 75 f. and 293 f.)

This omission of the first light syllable is characteristic of Chaucer's couplet and of Middle English verse generally. (See Schipper, vol. i. p. 462, and ten Brink's Chaucer's Sprache und Verskunst, p. 175.) In modern verse it is not usually permitted.

The time doth pass, yet shall not my love.

(WYATT: The joy so short, alas ! )

The omitted syllable following the medial pause is closely parallel to that at the beginning of the verse.

Stay! The king hath thrown his warder down.

Λ

(Richard II, I. iii. 118.)

Kneel thou down, Philip.

Λ

But rise more great.

(King John, I. i. 161.)

In drops of sorrow. Sons, kinsmen, thanes.

(Macbeth, I. iv. 35.)

Than the soft myrtle.

A

But man, proud man.

(Measure for Measure, II. ii. 117.)

These specimens of pauses in Shakspere's verse indicate the natural varieties of dramatic form. In such cases the pause often

occurs between speeches, or where some action is to be understood as filling the time; as in the second instance, where the accolade is given in the middle of the line. (See Abbott's Shakespearian Grammar, pp. 413 ff.)

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter

The thoughts that arise in me.

(TENNYSON: Break, Break, Break.)

In Lanier's Science of English Verse, p. 101, this stanza is represented in musical notation, with rests, to show that rhythm “may be dependent on silences.”

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And never brought to mind?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne?

Л

^

(BURNS: Auld Lang Syne.)

Here the syllables "auld" and "lang" may be regarded as lengthened so as to fill the time of the missing light syllables. So in many cases there is a choice between compensatory lengthening and compensatory pause.

Λ

Thus Calling

said the Lord in the Vault above the Cherubim,

Λ

to the angels and the souls in their degree:

"Lo! Earth has passed away

On the smoke of Judgment Day.

That Our word may be established shall We gather up the

Sea ?"

Loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly mariners:

Λ

"Plague upon the hurricane that made us furl and flee! But the war is done between us,

In the deep the Lord hath seen us

Our bones we'll leave the barracout', and God may sink the sea!"

(KIPLING: The Last Chantey.)

This is an instance of a pause forming a regular part of the verse-rhythm. Thus in the first verse of each stanza the second and sixth syllables are omitted, and the result gives the characteristic effect of the rhythm. In measures where there is regular catalexis (that is, where the last light syllable of the verse is regularly omitted) the phenomenon is really of the same kind.

These, these will give the world another heart,
And other pulses. Hear ye not the hum

Of mighty workings?

Listen awhile, ye nations, and be dumb.

(KEATS: Sonnet to Haydon.)

Come, dear children, come away down:
Call no more!

One last look at the white-walled town,

And the little gray church on the windy shore;
Then come down!

She will not come, though you call all day;

Come away, come away!

(MATTHEW ARNOLD: The Forsaken Merman.)

In this specimen no attempt has been made to indicate the pauses, as different readers would interpret the verse variously. It will be found that this whole poem is a study in delicate changes and arrangements of time-intervals. The four stresses characteristic of the rhythm can be accounted for in such short lines as the second and tenth, properly read.

II. THE FOOT AND THE VERSE

English verse is commonly measured by feet, a determinate number of which go to form a verse or line. The foot is determined by the distance from one accented syllable to another in the regular scheme of the metre. The usual metrical feet are either dissyllabic or trisyllabic. The dissyllabic foot is commonly called an iambus (or iamb) if the unaccented syllable precedes the accented, and a trochee if the accented precedes the unaccented. The trisyllabic foot is commonly called an anapest if the two unaccented syllables precede the accented syllable, and a dactyl if they follow the accented syllable.* It will be observed that the fundamental rhythm of both iambic and trochaic verse is the same, as is also that of both anapestic and dactylic verse; the distinction belonging only to the metre as measured into regular lines. Iambic and anapestic verse (in which the light syilables commonly open the verse) are sometimes called "ascending rhythm"; trochaic and dactylic verse (in which the accented

* The names of the several kinds of feet are of course borrowed from classical prosody, where they are used to mark feet made up not of accented and unaccented, but of long and short syllables. The different significance of the terms as applied to the verse of different languages has given rise to some confusion, and it is proposed by some to abandon the classical terms; their use, however, seems to be too well established in English to permit of change. Some would even abandon the attempt to measure English verse by feet, contending that its rhythm is too free to admit of any such measuring process; thus, see Mr. J. M. Robertson, in the Appendix to New Essays toward a Critical Method, and Mr. J. A. Symonds in his Blank Verse. See also in Mr. Robert Bridges's Milton's Prosody, Appendix G "On the Use of Greek Terminology in English Prosody." (1901 ed. p. 77.)