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Rising and Falling Rhythm in English Verse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Herbert L. Creek
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Extract

The question of rising and falling rhythm in English verse has received such various and confusing treatment in recent metrical discussion that further consideration is evidently necessary. It is my purpose to point out the factors that make verse rhythm rising or falling, and to emphasize the importance of vocabulary as one of these factors.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , 1920, pp. 76 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1920

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References

1 If any reader objects to the words “rising” and “falling” rhythm, he may substitute “iambic-anapestic feet” and “trochaic-dactylic feet.” The word “movement” is sometimes used in this paper as a synonym for “rhythm.”

2 History of English Prosody, vol. I, p. 402. The following hexameter line from Kingsley's Andromeda he regards as exemplifying the “tipping-up” process :

Over the mountain aloft ran a rush and a roll and a roaring.

3 C. M. Lewis, The Principles of English Verse, pp. 105 f.

4 The Basis of English Rhythm, p. 39.

5 A Study of Metre, p. 61.

6 An Introduction to Poetry, pp. 227 ff.

7 The Writing and Reading of Verse, Chapters vi and xvi.

8 The Foundations and Nature of Verse, p. 196.

9 Principes de la Métrique Anglaise, vol. I, p. 157.

10 Vol. xiii, pp. 157 ff. Bayfield's The Measures of the Poets (published since this article was written) and a discussion in the Athenaeum beginning with Professor Saintsbury's hostile review in the number for November 7, 1919, may be consulted.

11 More accurately, from the beginning of the vowel in one stressed syllable to the beginning of the vowel in the next stressed syllable. However, there is not agreement on this, as Jacob's discussion of accent shows.

12 Poe, “The Rationale of Verse,” and Brander Matthews, A Study of Versification, p. 27.

13 One may suspect that the poet himself did not feel that he was writing the ordinary iambic verse, for here and there he introduces an additional stressed syllable at the beginning of the line, as in the second line of the stanza given above, making it, if read separately, completely trochaic. There are four such lines in the forty lines of the poem.

14 The Foundations and Nature of Verse, pp. 196 f.

15 Mr. Jacob's exaggerated claims for the phrase at the expense of the line are criticized by his reviewer in Modern Language Notes, vol. xxxiv, p. 62.

16 Principles of English Verse, p. 103.

17 Mr. Jacob (Foundations and Nature of Verse, pp. 166 f.) denies that the line is a rhythmical unit except in so far as it coincides with the phrase and suggests, at least, that in run-over blank verse the line is a mere convention. Milton, however, is clearly conscious of the line as a unit, as the percentages in the table which follows show.

18 E. P. Morton, The Technique of English Non-Dramatic Blank Verse, p. 48.