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(a) Pauses not filling the time of syllables.

Most English verses of more than eight syllables are divided not only into the time-intervals between the accents, but also into two parts (which Schipper calls "rhythmical series") by the Cesura. The Cesura is a pause not counted out of the regular time of the rhythm, but corresponding to the pauses between "phrases" in music, and nearly always coinciding with syntactical or rhetorical divisions of the sentence.

The medial cesura is the typical pause of this kind, dividing the verse into two parts of approximately equal length. In much early English verse, and in French verse, this medial cesura is almost universal; in modern English verse (and in that of some early poets, notably Chaucer) there is great freedom in the placing of the cesura, and also in omitting it altogether. The importance of this matter in the history of English decasyllabic verse will appear in Part Two.

In the early Elizabethan period the impression was still general that there should be a regular medial cesura. Spenser seems to have been the first to imitate the greater freedom of Chaucer in this regard. See the Latin dissertation on Spenser's verse of E. Legouis (Quomodo E. Spenserus, etc., Paris, 1896), and the summary of its results by Mr. J. B. Fletcher in Modern Language Notes for November, 1898. "Spenser," says Mr. Fletcher, "revived for 'heroic verse' the neglected variety in unity of his self-acknowledged master, Chaucer." In Gascoigne's Notes of Instruction concerning the making of verse or ryme in English (1575), we find: "There are also certayne pauses or restes in a verse whiche may be called Ceasures. … In mine opinion in a verse of eight sillables, the pause will stand best in the middest, in a verse of tenne it will be placed at the ende of the first foure sillables; in a verse of twelve, in the midst. … In Rithme royall, it is at the wryters discretion, and forceth not where the pause be untill the ende of the line." This greater liberty allowed the rime royal is doubtless due to the influence of Chaucer on that form. For Gascoigne's practice in printing his verse with medial cesura, even without regard to rhetorical divisions, see the specimen given below.

Another interesting Elizabethan account of the cesura is found in Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie (1589), where the writer compares the verse-pause to a stop made by a traveler at an inn for rest and refreshment. (Arber's Reprint, p. 88.)

Specimen of French alexandrine, showing the regular medial cesura:

Trois fois cinquante jours le général naufrage

Dégasta l'univers; en fin d'un tel ravage

L'immortel s'émouvant, n'eût pas sonné si tôt

La retraite des eaux que soudain flot sur flot

Elles gaignent au pied; tous les fleuves s'abaissant.

Le mer rentre en prison; les montagnes renaissent.

(Du Bartas: La Première Semaine. 1579.)

See further, on the character of the French alexandrine and its medial cesura, in Part Two, under Six-stress Verse.

Specimen of early blank verse printed with regular medial cesura:

O Knights, O Squires, O Gentle blouds yborne,

You were not borne, al onely for your selves:

Your countrie claymes, some part of al your paines.

There should you live, and therein should you toyle,

To hold up right, and banish cruel wrong,

To helpe the pore, to bridle backe the riche,

To punish vice, and vertue to advaunce,

To see God servde, and Belzebub supprest.

You should not trust, lieftenaunts in your rome,

And let them sway, the scepter of your charge,

Whiles you (meane while) know scarcely what is don,

Nor yet can yeld, accompt if you were callde.

(Gascoigne: The Steel Glass, ll. 439 ff. 1576.)

For specimens of regular medial cesura, and of variable cesura, in modern verse, see under the Decasyllabic Couplet and Blank Verse, in Part Two.

The Cesura is called masculine when it follows an accented syllable. (For examples, see previous specimen from Gascoigne.) It is called feminine when it follows an unaccented syllable. Two varieties of the feminine cesura are also distinguished: the Lyric, when the pause occurs inside a foot; e.g.:

"This wicked traitor, whom I thus accuse;"

the Epic, when the pause occurs after an extra (hypermetrical) light syllable; e.g.:

"To Canterbury with ful devout corage."

"But how of Cawdor? the thane of Cawdor lives."

The "epic" cesura is quite as characteristic of dramatic blank verse as of epic.

The pause occurring at the end of a line is equally regular with the medial pause, and corresponds in the same way to a phrase-pause in music. It is an element of the same character, then, as the cesura, though not bearing the same name. It coincides less closely than the cesura with syntactical and rhetorical pauses. When there is no corresponding syntactical or rhetorical pause at the end of the line (in other words, when the metrical pause marking the end of the verse cannot be prominently represented in reading without interfering with the expression of the sense), the line is said to be "run-on." Such an ending is also called enjambement. The importance of this distinction between "end-stopped" and "run-on" lines will appear in the notes on the Decasyllabic Couplet and Blank Verse, in Part Two.

(b) Pauses filling the time of syllables.

A second class of silent time-intervals, or pauses, is to be distinguished from the cesural pause by the fact that in this case the 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.

Of fustian he wered a gipoun

‸ Al bismotered with his habergeoun.

For him was lever have at his beddes heed

‸ 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.

(Richard II, I. iii. 118.)

Kneel thou down, Philip. ‸ But rise more great.

(King John, I. i. 161.)

In drops of sorrow. ‸ Sons, kinsmen, thanes.

(Macbeth, I. iv. 35.)

Than the soft myrtle. ‸ 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.)

‸ Break, ‸ break, ‸ break,

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?

(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.

Thus ‸ said the Lord ‸ in the Vault above the Cherubim,

Calling 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:

"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.)

Call her once before you go—

Call once yet!

In a voice that she will know—

"Margaret! Margaret!"

Children's voices should be dear

(Call once more) to a mother's ear;

Children's voices, wild with pain—

Surely she will come again!

Call her once, and come away;

This way, this way! …

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.