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If necessary, a distinction might be drawn between these two forms of Quadruple measure and those forms of it in which the primary accent belongs to the second of its two Double measures. The following, for instance, is usually considered to be an example of Initial Double measure. But it might be divided into feet like these, and termed Final Diinitial Quadruple measure, because the primary accent belongs to the final double foot constituting the Quadruple measure:
We the falries | blithe and antic,
Trans. by Leigh Hunt. And this, for similar reasons, might be termed Final Diterminal Quadruple measure:
Domestic bliss has proved my båne
A harder case you never heard,
-Bains Carew: Gilbert. In such cases, however, it is better to attribute the greater prominence given to certain of the accented syllables, not to the supposed fact that the lines containing them are composed in Quadruple measure, instead of-as seems to be the case-in Double measure; but to the effects, considered in Chapter Fourth, of short quantity which increases the rapidity of the movement, and of the pauses in the middle and at the end of each line which increase the emphasis of the accented syllables immediately preceding them. If we call the measures that we have just examined Quadruple, what is to prevent our supposing that verses, written in triple measure like the
following, contain feet composed of four, or even six, syllables ?
Guvener B. I is a sensible man ;
- The Biglow Papers : Lowell. We have seen now that all the different kinds of elocu tionary stress have correspondences in poetic measures. It remains to be said that, just as different kinds of stress may be used in reading different parts of the same sentence, so different kinds of measures may be used in the same verse, either for the sake of variety, or to give peculiar emphasis to some word or syllable thus thrust into unusual and unexpected importance.
Here terminal accent is used for initial, at the beginning of a line :
Hears amid the chime and singing
- Carillon : Longfellow. And here at the end of a line :
Silence on the town descended,
Here initial accent is used for terminal, at the beginning of a line, and also at its end :
Blaze with your serried columns,
- The Seminole's Defiance : G. W. Patten. And here at its end :
O sacred head now wounded,
With grief and shame weighed down.
In the following, with the variety that is common in triple measure, we have initial accent in Sunbeam; terminal, in From cape; median, in The mountains; initial triple, in Over a; and terminal tripple, in with a bridge, etc.
From cape to cape with a bridge-like shape,
Over a torrent sea,
- The Cloud : Shelley. Corresponding to the methods of dramatic elocution, changes in measure are often made in order to represent the movements of certain objects described. Notice, in the following terminal double measures, how the placing of the accent on the first syllable of many of the feet, serves, by changing them into initial triple measures, to convey the impression of rapidity:
Each creek and bay
- Paradise Lost, 7: Milton. Notice here, too, the words italicized :
-Childe Harold : Byron. And the representation of the movement of the leaf, when the poet comes to speak of it, in the following:
Is it the wind that moaneth bleak?
-Christabel : Coleridge.
ELOCUTIONARY AND POETIC REGULARITY OF FORCE.
Regularity of Force combining its Instinctive with Reflective Tendencies,
and representing Emotive Influencel Abrupt and Smooth Force, as used in Elocution-Irregular and Regular Accentuation corresponding to them in Poetry-Abruptness in Short and Long Lines-Imitative Effects, etc.
THIS subject of changes in metre introduces us, natu
rally, to the third way in which force on different words may differ-namely, in regularity. It may be abrupt or smooth, each respectively representing the amount of mere instinct or of reflection in the emotion accompanying the momentum. Abrupt force indicates interruption, excitement, vehemence, anger; smooth force continuity, satisfaction, gentleness, delight. The poetic equivalent for the first seems to be found in lines in which there is a break in the regularity of the rhythm, either because two accented syllables are brought together, or a larger number of unaccented ones than the rhythm warrants. For instance, we must all perceive the abrupt effects produced by the first syllables of Battering, and belching, and by the word Far in the following, coming, respectively, as they do, immediately after the accented words, sob, wide, and flame :
I will not cease to grasp the hope I hold
- St. Simeon Stylites : Tennyson.