verse of Milton and Thomson on the one hand, and of Dryden on the other; i. e. by the admission or exclusion of feminine endings. The strict form of the epic blank verse, with masculine endings, is preferred in the narrative or reflective poems of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Southey, Shelley, Keats, W. S. Landor, Longfellow, D. G. Rossetti, Mrs. Browning, Robert Browning, Matthew Arnold, Tennyson, Swinburne, and Edwin Arnold.' The free form is represented, mainly, in the dramatic verse of the same and other poets, being used by Coleridge (in his translation of The Piccolomini), Wordsworth, Southey, Lamb, Byron, Shelley, W. S. Landor, Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, and others.2 CHAPTER XIII TROCHAIC METRES § 181. TROCHAIC metres, which, generally speaking, are less common in English poetry than iambics, were not used at all till the Modern English Period. The old metrical writers (Gascoigne, James VI, W. Webbe) only know rising metres. Puttenham (1589) is the first metrician who quotes four-foot trochaic lines; similar verses also occur during the same period in Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and other plays. Whether they were introduced directly on foreign models, or originated indirectly from the influence of the study of the ancients by means of a regular omission of the first thesis of the iambic metres, we do not know. It is likewise uncertain who was the first to use strict trochaic verses deliberately in English, or in what chronological order the various trochaic metres formed in analogy with the iambic ones entered into English poetry. The longest trochaic lines, to which we first turn our attention, seem to be of comparatively late date. The eight-foot trochaic line, more exactly definable as the acatalectic trochaic tetrameter (cf. § 77), is the longest trochaic metre we find in English poetry. As a specimen of this metre the first stanza of a short poem by Thackeray written in this form has been quoted already on page 127. As a rule, however, this acatalectic feminine line is mingled with catalectic verses with masculine endings, as e. g. in the following burlesque by Thackeray, Damages Two Hundred Pounds: Só, God bless the Spécial Júry! | príde and joy of English ground, And the happy land of England, | where true justice does abound! British júrymen and húsbands, | let us háil this verdict proper: If a British wife offends you, | Britons, you've a right to whóp her. While the catalectic iambic tetrameter is a line of seven feet (the last arsis being omitted), the catalectic trochaic tetrameter loses only the last thesis, but keeps the preceding arsis; and on this account it remains a metre of eight feet. 4, Rhyming couplets of this kind of verse, when broken up into short lines, give rise to stanzas with the formulas a ~ b c ~ b1, d ~e~f~e~4; or, if inserted rhymes are used, we have the form a ba~ 64 (alternating masculine and feminine endings), or a~b~a~b~4 (if there are feminine endings only). In both these cases the eight-foot rhythm is distinctly preserved to the But this is no longer the case in another trochaic metre of eight feet, where the theses of both the fourth and the eighth foot are wanting, as may be noticed in Swinburne, A Midsummer Holiday, p. 132: ear. Scárce two hundred years are gone, |ánd the world is pást awáy Ás a noise of brawling wind, | ás a flásh of breaking fóam, Thát beheld the singer bórn | who raised up the dead of Róme; And a mightier now than he | bids him too rise up to-day; still less when such lines are broken up by inserted rhyme in stanzas of the form a bab In cases, too, where the eight-foot trochaic verse is broken up by leonine rhyme, the rhythm has a decided four-foot cadence on account of the rapid recurrence of the rhyme. § 182. The seven-foot trochaic line is theoretically either a brachycatalectic tetrameter with a feminine or a hypercatalectic trimeter with a masculine ending. An example of the first kind we had on p. 128. A more correct specimen is the following line from the same poem: Hásten, Lord, who árt my Helper; | let thine áid be speedy. The verses quoted on p. 128 are incorrect in so far as the caesura occurs at an unusual place, viz, in the middle of the fourth foot, instead of after it, as in the example just quoted. They show, however, the origin of a pretty frequently occurring anisorhythmical stanza, which is derived from this metre by means of the use of inserted rhyme; lines 1 and 3 having a trochaic, lines 2 and 4, on the other hand, an iambic rhythm; cf. e. g. the following stanza from a poem by Suckling (Poets, iii. 741): Sáy, but did you love so long? In truth I needs must bláme you: When there are masculine rhymes throughout, the stanza is felt distinctly as consisting of alternate lines of four and three feet (a, bვ a, ხვ). The seven-foot rhythm, however, remains, if the three-foot half-lines only have masculine endings, and the four-foot halflines remain feminine; as is the case in Swinburne's poem Clear the Way (Mids. Hol., p. 143): Clear the way, my lords and lackeys, you have hád your dáy. Here you have your answer, England's | yéa agáinst your náy; Long enough your house has held you: | úp, and clear the way! This, of course, is likewise the case, if the verses are broken up into stanzas by inserted rhyme (a b ̧ a bз). More frequently than this correct seven-foot verse, with either a feminine or masculine ending, we find the incorrect type, consisting of a catalectic and a brachycatalectic dimeter, according to the model of the well-known Low Latin verse: Mihi est propositum | in taberna mori, which is often confounded with the former (cf. § 135). The following first stanza of a poem by Suckling (Poets, iii. 471) is written in exact imitation of this metre: Óut upon it, I have loved | thrée whole days together; Although only the long lines rhyme, the stanza is commonly printed in short lines (a b~c4b3~). Still more frequently we find short-lined stanzas of the kind (a b~ a b ̧ ~) as well as the other sub-species with masculine rhymes only: a b a bз. 3 § 183. The six-foot trochaic line occurs chiefly in Modern English, and appears both in acatalectic (feminine) and catalectic (masculine) form; e.g. in Swinburne The Last Oracle (Poems and Ballads, ii. 1): Day by day thy shadow | shines in heaven beholden, Strictly the caesura ought to occur after the third foot, as it does in the first line; generally, however, it is within the third foot, and so this metre as well as the stanza formed by insertion of rhyme acquires an anisorhythmical character, as e. g. in the following quatrain by Moore: All that's bright must fáde, The brightest still the fleetest; But to be lost when sweetest. When masculine rhymes are used throughout, the six-foot rhythm is preserved in anisorhythmical stanzas of this kind just as well as when lines like the first of those in the example quoted above, Day by day, &c., are broken up by inserted rhymes (a~b~a~b); or again when they have masculine endings in the second half-lines (a-ba-b). If the first half is masculine however, and the second feminine (or if both have masculine endings on account of a pause caused by the missing thesis), the verses have a three-foot character, e. g. in Moore : While I touch the string, Wreathe my brows with laurel, Hás for once a móral. §184. The five-foot trochaic line also occurs both in acatalectic (feminine) and catalectic (masculine) form, and each of them is found in stanzas rhyming alternately, as e. g. in Mrs. Hemans's O ye voices (vii. 57): Ó ye voices round | my own hearth singing! As the winds of Máy to mémory sweet, Might I yet return, a wórn heart bringing, Would those vérnal tónes | the wanderer gréet ? Such verses, of course, can be used also in stanzas with either masculine or feminine endings only. |