may be shown by reading the same line many times with pauses of varying length at the cesura. A point will be found beyond which the line ceases to be felt as a single rhythmic unit. The following lines illustrate the variations in the use of the cesura:

She had

A heart || how shall I say? || too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; || she liked whate'er
She looked on, || and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, 'twas all one! || My favor at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the west.

(Browning: My Last Duchess.)

As one for knightly giusts || and fierce encounters fitt.
Upon his foe, || a Dragon horrible and stearne.

(Spenser: Faery Queene, li.)

With the longer meters, hexameter, heptameter, etc., a reader may prefer to divide the rhythm regularly after the third or fourth foot, whether the sense requires a pause there or not. Thus, the last line quoted would be given a second cesura after Dragon. If, however, this regularity of position of the cesura is insisted on with meters like the octameter of Alfred Noyes' Orpheus and Eurydice, they merely break into shorter lines. The octameter can be preserved by such division as,

Cloud upon cloud, the purple pinewoods clung to the rich Arcadian mountains,

followed by,

Holy-sweet as a column of incense, where Eurydice roamed and sung,

and occasionally varied by a line like the following, with a pause after fleet, or fawn, or fern, or even no cesura at all:

Fair and fleet as a fawn that shakes the dew from the fern at break of day.

The monotony of the "Poulter's measure" of the sixteenth century (hexameters alternating with heptameters ad nauseam) is caused by the constant recurrence of cesuras in the same place, e. g.

The garden gives good food, || and ayd for leaches cure:
The garden, full of great delight, || his master doth allure.
Sweet sallet herbs bee here, || and herbs of every kind:
The ruddy grapes, the seemly fruits || bee here at hand to find.
(Tottle's Miscellany: Garden.)

In pentameter, the shifting of the position of the cesura from line to line is an important means of avoiding monotony. The passage quoted from Browning illustrates this, and Milton's masterly variation in this respect is one of the glories of his blank verse. In the heroic verse of the age of Pope, when an arbitrary number of syllables was a strict convention, it was felt necessary (with occasional exceptions) to make a pause after the fourth, fifth or sixth syllable of a line; but the importance of at least so much variety was recognized.18 Observe the slight changes of position of the cesura in the following:

Meanwhile, || declining || from the noon of day,
The sun obliquely shoots || his burning ray;
The hungry judges || soon the sentence sign,
And wretches hang || that jurymen may dine;

The merchant from th' Exchange || returns in peace,

And the long labors of the toilet cease.

(Pope: Rape of the Lock, IV.)

18 Metrists call a cesura masculine when it comes after a stressed syllable, as in,

Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er;

it is classed as feminine if it comes after an unstressed syllable, as in, She looked on, || and her looks went everywhere.

Whether a cesura is masculine or feminine is a matter of very great importance in trochaic and dactylic verse. See Chapters XVI and XVII.

CHAPTER IV

VERSE PATTERN-DUPLE AND TRIPLE RHYTHM

According to the defini'ion of meter upon which the discussion so far has been based, any line which a reader divides into approximately equal time parts is verse. This is the underlying principle of English verse, from Beowulf to Browning. Different periods, however, have developed different conventions and different ornaments of verse; and the English sense of rhythm has varied from allowing extreme freedom as to the number of syllables to a time part, to demanding complete symmetry in this respect, then back to a position somewhere between these two attitudes. Here is a scansion of a passage of alliterative Middle English verse. Following Professor Skeat, I have considered each long line as two short ones (divided by a point in the manuscript), though they are printed as one. If the reader prefers, they may be regarded as long lines, with the cesura indicated by the point.

In a somer | seson
I shope me in | shroudes
In habite as an | heremite
Went | wyde in this world

Whan | soft was the | sonne,
As I a shepe | were,
Un- | holy of workes,
| Wonderes to | here.
On | Malverne | hulles

10 Ac on a May | mornynge

Me by- fel a ferly Of | fairy, me | thoughte;

I was wery for- | wandered And I went me to reste
Vnder a brode | banke bi a | bornes | side,

And as I lay and lened" and | loked in the wateres,

1 Ed. Piers the Plowman, Oxford, 1900.

2 Professor Skeat in these two lines makes a foot of Vnder a and another of as I, thus giving three feet to these lines. Line 9, however, he does not treat in this way. I prefer to consider that there are three unstressed syllables at the beginning of all three lines. These may be regarded as corresponding to the free recitative that often begins a chant.

20 Islombered in a | slepyng it | sweyved so | merye.

(Piers the Plowman, Prol.)

Evidently the only principles of this verse are that there should be two feet to a line with alliteration in the first three stressed syllables of every two lines. The number of syllables to a foot is usually either two or three; but one, four, and even five ("slombered in a," 1. 19) are allowable. Lines may begin with direct attack,

Wonderes to | here, (line 8)

or, with either one, two, or three unstressed syllables. Verse based on such liberal principles (called tumbling verse) was written during the Anglo-Saxon period and during the Middle English "Alliterative Revival," to which Piers the Plowman belongs; but this irregular kind of rhythm has not been in fashion since Langland's time. Two hundred years before this revival, the native English verse began to be superseded by verse with a regular rhythmic pattern-a norm of two syllables to each foot. This we shall call Duple Rhythm. Later developed a norm of three syllables to the foot-Triple Rhythm-but this type of verse did not have a definitely recognized place until late in the seventeenth century. Early in the nineteenth century a third norm came to be accepted-Duple-Triple Rhythm-a free combination of the two others, which has a different effect from either. Quadruple Rhythm, a norm of four syllables to the foot, was the last to be recognized, and is still comparatively unusual.

None of these rhythmic patterns was used with an unvaried evenness at any period of our literature. The principle of time equality in the feet makes slight departures from the pattern always possible without breaking the established meter of a poem. Certain slight departures from the exact rhythmic pattern have always been felt to add to the beauty of English verse, but what these changes may be, has varied with different ages and different schools.

The following passages exemplify the four types of rhythmic pattern:

Duple Rhythm:

The curfew tolls the | knell of parting | day,
The lowing herd winds | slowly | o'er the | lea,
The plowman | homeward | plods his weary | way,
And leaves the world to | darkness | and to me.
(Gray: Elegy.)

Triple Rhythm:

The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were | gleaming in | purple and gold;
And the sheen of their | spears was like | stars on the | sea,
When the blue wâve rôlls | nightly on | deep Gali- | lee.
(Byron: Hebrew Melodies.)

In the silence of the camp before the fight,

When it's good to make your will and say your prayer,

You can hear my strûmpty- | tumpty over- | night

Ex-plaining tên to one was always | fair.
I'm the prophet of the | Utterly Ab- | surd,

Of the Patently Im- | possible and | Vain

And when the Thing that | Couldn't has oc- | curred,
Give me time to change my leg and go a- gain.

(Kipling: Song of the Banjo.)

The even rhythmic pattern of the first three examples runs on continuously; the line division halts it for an instant, but does not change it. In the last passage, the