Chapters on English Metre

1st foot 3rd foot 4th foot A. J. Ellis accented syllable admits Alexandrine amphibrach anacrusis anap anapaest anapaestic line bacchius beauty beginning blank verse caesura catalectic Cenci common cretic dactyl disyllabic divided Dr Abbott Dr Guest Dr Skeat elision Ellis English hexameter English metre examples extra syllable extra-metrical extrametrical feminine ending feminine rhythm following lines four four-foot iambic give heroic iamb iambic lines initial truncation instance irregular last syllable Latin long syllable Lord Macbeth marked metre metrical accent metrists middle pause Milton monosyllabic monosyllable natural night number of syllables pitch poem poet poetry preceding pronunciation prosody pyrrhic quoted reader regular rhyme rhythmical rule scanning scansion second foot seems Shakespeare Shelley Shelley's shew short syllables slurring sometimes specimen speech spondee stanza stress superfluous syllable Tennyson thee third foot thou three syllables three-foot tribrach trisyllabic feet trochaic trochee two-foot unaccented syllable vowel words