A Handbook of Modern English Metre |
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Common terms and phrases
accent alliteration amphibrach anacrusis anap anapaestic anapaestic metres assonance beauty blank verse Book breathed Chapters on Metre cretic dactylic dark death disyllabic Dorian Dryden effect eight-foot English metre examples EXERCISES ON CHAPTER extra syllable eyes feet feminine ending five-foot iambic following lines foot four-foot anapaestic four-foot iambic glory Hamlet hath heart heaven hexameter hymn hypermetrical syllable I O O iamb iambic iambic line imitation initial truncation internal rhyme internal truncation irregular latter light long vowels Love's Labour's Lost marked Masson Matthew Arnold Maud metrists Milton monosyllable O O I o'er onomatopoeia passion pause poem poetry poets Pope refrain rhythm sestet Shakespeare Shelley Shelley's six-foot sleep slurring soft song sorrow sound spondaic spondee stanza stress substitution superfluous syllable sweet Swinburne Tennyson thee thou three-foot trisyllabic metre trochaic trochaic metre trochee two-foot unaccented syllables verse wind word
Popular passages
Page 44 - By the struggling moonbeam's misty light, And the lantern dimly burning. No useless coffin enclosed his breast, Not in sheet nor in shroud we wound him; But he lay like a warrior taking his rest, With his martial cloak around him. Few and short were the prayers we said, And we spoke not a word of sorrow; But we steadfastly gazed on the face of the dead, And we bitterly thought of the morrow.
Page 144 - On Linden, when the sun was low, All bloodless lay the untrodden snow ; And dark as winter was the flow Of Iser, rolling rapidly. But Linden saw another sight, When the drum beat at dead of night, Commanding fires of death to light The darkness of her scenery.
Page 6 - A lily of a day Is fairer far, in May, Although it fall and die that night; It was the plant and flower of light. In small proportions we just beauties see; And in short measures life may perfect be.
Page 122 - Our revels now are ended... These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air, And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind: we are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep..
Page 78 - Come away, come away, death, And in sad cypress let me be laid ; Fly away, fly away, breath ; I am slain by a fair cruel maid. My shroud of white, stuck all with yew, O, prepare it ! My part of death, no one so true Did share it.
Page 57 - And anon there breaks a sigh, And anon there drops a tear, From a sorrow-clouded eye, And a heart sorrow-laden, A long, long sigh, For the cold, strange eyes of a little Mermaiden And the gleam of her golden hair. Come away, away, children; Come, children, come down! The hoarse wind blows colder; Lights shine in the town.
Page 122 - So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, And yet anon repairs his drooping head, And tricks his beams, and with new spangled ore Flames in the forehead of the morning sky...
Page 56 - SWEET and low, sweet and low, Wind of the western sea, Low, low, breathe and blow, Wind of the western sea ! Over the rolling waters go, Come from the dying moon, and blow, Blow him again to me ; While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps. Sleep and rest, sleep and rest, Father will come to thee soon ; Rest, rest, on mother's breast, Father will come to thee soon ; Father will come to his babe in the nest, Silver sails all out of the west Under the silver moon : Sleep, my little one, sleep,...
Page 89 - O well for the fisherman's boy, That he shouts with his sister at play ! O well for the sailor lad, That he sings in his boat on the bay ! And the stately ships go on To their haven under the hill; But O for the touch of a...
Page 90 - Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green, That host with their banners at sunset were seen: Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown, That host on the morrow lay withered and strown. For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast, And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed...