There are two other feet which are found occasionally in English poetry, namely the spondee, which has two accented syllables, and the amphilbrach, which consists of three syllables with the accent on the middle one.
Of course it is not necessary for you to know the names of these different feet in order to enjoy poetry, but it is interesting information. What you must do is to notice whenever you read poetry the kind of feet that compose the lines and how many there are in the line. After a while this becomes second nature to you, and while you may not really pause to think about it at any time, yet you are always conscious of the rhythm and remember that it is produced by a fixed arrangement of the accented syllables. If you would look over the poems in these volumes, beginning even with the nursery rhymes, it would not take you long to become familiar with all the different forms.
While study of this kind may seem tiresome at first, you will soon find that you are making progress and will really enjoy it, and you will never be sorry that you took the time when you were young to learn to understand the structure of poetry.
THE GOVERNOR AND THE NOTARY
By Washington Irving
In former times there ruled, as governor of the Alhambra[20-1], a doughty old cavalier, who, from having lost one arm in the wars, was commonly known by the name of El Gobernador Manco, or the one-armed governor. He in fact prided himself upon being an old soldier, wore his mustachios curled up to his eyes, a pair of campaigning boots, and a toledo[20-2] as long as a spit, with his pocket handkerchief in the basket-hilt.
He was, moreover, exceedingly proud and punctilious, and tenacious of all his privileges and dignities. Under his sway, the immunities of the Alhambra, as a royal residence and domain, were rigidly exacted. No one was permitted to enter the fortress with firearms, or even with a sword or staff, unless he were of a certain rank, and every horseman was obliged to dismount at the gate and lead his horse by the bridle. Now, as the hill of the Alhambra rises from the very midst of the city of Granada, being, as it were, an excrescence of the capital, it must at all times be somewhat irksome to the captain-general, who commands the province, to have thus an imperium in imperio,[21-3] a petty, independent post in the very core of his domains. It was rendered the more galling in the present instance, from the irritable jealousy of the old governor, that took fire on the least question of authority and jurisdiction, and from the loose, vagrant character of the people that had gradually nestled themselves within the fortress as in a sanctuary, and from thence carried on a system of roguery and depredation at the expense of the honest inhabitants of the city. Thus there was a perpetual feud and heart-burning between the captain-general and the governor; the more virulent on the part of the latter, inasmuch as the smallest of two neighboring potentates is always the most captious about his dignity. The stately palace of the captain-general stood in the Plaza Nueva, immediately at the foot of the hill of the Alhambra, and here was always a bustle and parade of guards, and domestics, and city functionaries. A beetling bastion of the fortress overlooked the palace and the public square in front of it; and on this bastion the old governor would occasionally strut backward and forward, with his toledo girded by his side, keeping a wary eye down upon his rival, like a hawk reconnoitering his quarry from his nest in a dry tree.
Whenever he descended into the city it was in grand parade, on horseback, surrounded by his guards, or in his state coach, an ancient and unwieldy Spanish edifice of carved timber and gilt leather, drawn by eight mules, with running footmen, outriders, and lackeys, on which occasions he flattered himself he impressed every beholder with awe and admiration as vicegerent of the king, though the wits of Granada were apt to sneer at his petty parade, and, in allusion to the vagrant character of his subjects, to greet him with the appellation of “the king of the beggars.”