lyrical poetry - OUDL Home

LNTRODUCVORYone foot at the end and so admitting of a longer pause:It's narrow, narrow male' your bedAnd learn to lie your lane ; A AFor I'm gaun o'er the sea, fair Annie,A braw bride to bring ha me. A AWi' her I will get gowd and gear :With you I ne'er got nane. A AThe divisions of the verse consist each of two lines asprinted, of seven feet; and the ear is conscious of alonger pause than in the longer measure; one internallybeats the interval of a foot. In another variant, theAlexandrine, a foot is dropped, a pause beat out ideally,in the middle and at the end of the line:When the hour of death is come v V let none ask whence or why. V VMost often the Alexandrine is disguised to the eyeby the division into two lines frequently with rhyme.Thus Shelley's Skylark is really written in Alexandrinesthroughout and could be printed thus without anyother effect than making some of the rhymes whatwe call internal:Higher still and higher from the earth thou springestLike a cloud of fire ; the blue deep thou wingest;And singing still doth soar and soaring ever singest.There are three clauses, at the end of each of whichone expects to pause even if the poet compHcatesthe effect by running on. It is the same with theanapaestic lines in Byron's Stanzas to Augusta:Though the day of my Destiny's over, and the star of my Fate hathdeclin'd,Thy soft heart refus'd to discover the faults which so many could find.A third variant which the author notes is the15