, or by
. That is, the words light, alight, lighted, alighted can all be produced in a single speech-wave. But if a word has two accents, it requires two impulses to utter it, and really contains two speech-waves. Such words are extremely common; as cónque-ròr, amál-gamàte, &c.; and many English words require three speech-waves, as insòl-ubíli-tỳ; or even four, as ìn-combùsti-bíli-tỳ.
[§ 101]. Here comes in the distinction between prose and verse. It is equally easy to describe the accentual structure of either; and it is readily perceived that, in prose, the speech-waves succeed each other so that there is, usually, no perceptible regularity in the distribution of strong and weak syllables; but, in verse, we expect them to be distributed in a manner sufficiently regular for the ear to recognise some law of recurrence, and to expect it.
An extremely regular line occurs in Goldsmith's Deserted Village:—