The Spondee (spondaic) is a dissyllabic foot of two stressed syllables. It does not commonly occur in English poetry, for the reason that few English words are evenly accented. It is used mostly in combination with other kinds of feet:

If

If we all of us end in being our own corpse coffins at last.
-TENNYSON's Vastness.

The Dactyl (dactylic) is a trisyilabic foot whose stress is on the first syllable:

happiness glorious lingering

Make no deep scrutiny

Into her mutiny.

HOOD's The Bridge of Sighs.

The Anapest (anapestic) is a trisyllabic foot whose accent is on the third syllable :

And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back

For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track.

- BROWNING'S How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix.

The Amphibrach (amphibrachic) is a trisyllabic foot with the accent on the second syllable:

KINDS OF VERSE

Monometer verse is verse of one accented syllable, or of one foot. It occurs rarely except in combination with other longer verses:

Thirty nobles saddled with speed;

(Hurry).

- NORTON'S King of Denmark's Ride.

It is probably met with in humorous doggerel more than in poetry :

A book,

A maid,

A nook,

And shade.":

Dimeter is verse of two accented syllables:

This doth remain

To ease my pain.

PEELE'S Colin's Passion of Love.

Trimeter is verse of three accented syllables:

They pass the cradle head
And there a promise shed;
They pass a moist new grave,

And bid rank verdure wave.

- HARRIET MARTINEAU'S On, On, Forever.

Tetrameter is verse of four accented syllables:

Come, pensive nun, devout and pure,

Sober, steadfast, and demure.

MILTON'S Il Penseroso.

Pentameter is verse of five accented syllables. This and tetrameter are the two most popular verses in English poetry:

Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room;
And hermits are contented with their cells.

- WORDSWORTH's Sonnets.

Hexameter is verse of six accented syllables:

And, as she pressed once more the lifeless head to her bosom. - LONGFELLOW's Evangeline.

Heptameter is verse of seven accented syllables :

No, we are here to wait and work and strain our banished eyes.
COSMO MONKHOUSE'S A Dead March.

Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the two shall meet. - KIPLING'S Ballad of East and West.

Octometer is verse of eight accented syllables:

Innocence seethed in her mother's milk, and Charity setting the martyr aflame. TENNYSON's Vastness.

Heptameter and Octometer are not common in English poetry. They are too long and are usually divided, the heptameter into tetrameter and trimeter, the octometer into two tetrameter verses.

IRREGULARITIES IN SCANSION

We have seen in many of the above illustrations, that, while the proper number of accents is always to be found, the poetic feet vary. Thus the octameter above from Tennyson's Vastness has different feet in it, dactylic, spondaic, and iambic. The one rule is that a single "time" must always prevail. The line must have a dactylic, or an iambic, or a trochaic swing to it. If, for variety, other feet are employed, they must not be so used as to upset the prevailing meter.

Sometimes in reading a verse of poetry we have been con

scious of a pause forced upon us which has not been due to punctuation. This place of pause is called the Cæsura, and it is the natural, instinctive pause of expressional grouping. Even the merest conversation in which you and I indulge has in it these groups of expression, although we may be quite unconscious of them. Usually the Cæsura occurs in the early part of the verse. It may interrupt a foot, breaking it in two. It is particularly noticeable in dramatic poetry because particularly necessary for the actor. But it is found in all good poetry. It is indicated in the following examples by the vertical lines:

And this our life exempt from public haunt.

SHAKESPEARE'S As You Like It.

And all the men and women merely players.

SHAKESPEARE's As You Like It.

Then saw they how there hove a dusky barge
Dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stern.

An Acatalectic verse (or one with a strong ending) is one that has a certain number of completed feet.

A Catalectic verse (or one with a weak ending) is one that has an uncompleted foot at the end :

This incomplete foot may combine with the first foot of the next line to make a complete one:

The snow had begun in the gloaming,

And busily all the night.

By Poetic license is meant the various liberties a poet may take with language in order to make it conform with the rules of poetry. He may abbreviate words; e'er for ever; he may invert the grammatical order of a sentence; he may use old or archaic words in order to create a certain atmosphere; he may take liberties in the construction of rhymes; he may change the accent of a word, and so on. All of these are his privileges as a poet, but if he carries them to the point of artificiality his work suffers. We should examine them in any poem we read to see just what is gained or lost through them.

VERSE ENDINGS — RHYME

Rhyme is correspondence in sound between or among words. When this occurs at the ends of certain verses, it is called End rhyme. When it occurs between the middle and the end word of a verse it is called Middle or Medial or Internal rhyme.

The feast is set, the guests are met.

COLERIDGE's The Ancient Mariner.

A word cannot be used to rhyme with itself. Poets sometimes make a word that has two meanings rhyme with itself when they use it in both meanings but this is not regarded as good. It is called Identical rhyme.

Care should be taken by the good poet to have his rhyming accurate; although even the best poets are sometimes offenders, as some of the following quotations will prove. Go rhymes with throw but not with to or do. The sounds of two words may be different though their spelling is alike, and vice versa.

Rhyme, it must always be remembered, has reference to