"When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line, too, labors, and the words move slow;
Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the main."
The first two lines occupy more time in reading than the last two, the sound in each case corresponding in some measure to the sense. An examination of the lines will show that the first two have more long vowel sounds than the last two, and that these and other vowel sounds are lengthened in pronunciation by the presence of difficult consonant combinations. "Ajax strives" and "rock's vast weight" are not phrases that slip quickly from the tongue. Furthermore, the second line is lengthened by no fewer than three pauses.
The principle of English verse is accent, and not quantity. In the line,
"The mossy marbles rest,"
it will be observed that every other syllable receives a stress of voice or is accented. The scheme of the verse may be represented as follows:
the line being broken up into three equal and similar parts, each of which is called a foot. The foot consisting of an unaccented followed by an accented syllable is called an iambus.
In the line,
"Home they brought her warrior dead,"
we observe that beginning with the first syllable every other one is accented, giving us the following as the scheme of the verse: