Читать книгу English Verse - Raymond Macdonald Alden - Страница 16

(In combination with three-stress:)

Like a gloomy stain

On the emerald main

Alpheus rushed behind—

As an eagle pursuing

A dove to its ruin

Down the streams of the cloudy wind.

(Shelley: Arethusa. 1820.)

(With feminine ending:)

He is gone on the mountain,

He is lost to the forest,

Like a summer-dried fountain,

When our need was the sorest.

The font, reappearing,

From the raindrops shall borrow,

But to us comes no cheering,

To Duncan no morrow!

(Scott: Coronach, from The Lady of the Lake, Canto 3. 1810.)

(In combination with four-stress:)

Fear death?—to feel the fog in my throat,

The mist in my face.

When the snows begin, and the blasts denote

I am nearing the place,

The power of the night, the press of the storm,

The post of the foe;

Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,

Yet the strong man must go.

(Browning: Prospice. 1864.)

These specimens, as is usual in anapestic verse, show considerable freedom in the treatment of the part of the foot containing the light syllables, substituted iambi being very common. Note the iambi in the Shelley stanza, line 1, second foot, and line 5, first foot. In the latter case, however, the first light syllable of line 5 is really supplied by the syllable added to make the feminine ending of line 4. In like manner, in the Scott stanza, the first syllable of line 8 is really supplied by the -ing of line 7; and where we have both feminine ending (in line 1) and a full anapest following, the effect is that of a hypermetrical syllable which must be hurried over in the reading. In the specimen from Browning we find an iambus in the opening foot in lines 2 and 6 (also, of course, in lines 1 and 5).