Читать книгу English Verse - Raymond Macdonald Alden - Страница 26

After the pangs of a desperate lover,

When day and night I have sighed all in vain;

Ah, what a pleasure it is to discover

In her eyes pity, who causes my pain!

(Dryden: Song in An Evening's Love. 1668.)

Of this song Mr. Saintsbury says that it is "one of the rare examples of a real dactylic metre in English, where the dactyls are not, as usual, equally to be scanned as anapests." (Life of Dryden, Men of Letters Series, p. 62.) Here, as almost always in English, the measure is catalectic, a final dactyl being instinctively avoided, except in short two-stress lines.

Warriors and chiefs! should the shaft or the sword

Pierce me in leading the host of the Lord,

Heed not the corse, though a king's, in your path:

Bury your steel in the bosoms of Gath!

(Byron: Song of Saul before his Last Battle. 1815.)

Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King,

Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing:

And, pressing a troop, unable to stoop

And see the rogues flourish and honest folk droop,

Marched them along, fifty-score strong,

Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song.

(Browning: Cavalier Tunes. 1843.)

Here the metre is varied interestingly by pauses. Thus in lines 1 and 5 the light syllables of the second foot are wholly wanting.