(Apparently intended for a dactylic octometer. Like all these things in English, it probably goes better as anapæstic with anacrusis and hypercatalexis. See dotted scansion.)
(e) Browning (Abt Vogler):
Would ¦ that the | struc¦ture | brave, ¦ the | man¦ifold | mu¦sic I | build,¦
Bid¦ding my | or¦gan o|bey, ¦| call¦ing its |keys ¦ to their | work,
Claim¦ing each | slave ¦ of the | sound ¦ at a | touch, ¦ as when | So¦lomon | willed
Ar¦mies of | an¦gels that | soar, ¦| le¦gions of | de¦mons that | lurk.
Man, brute, ¦| reptile, ¦| fly, ¦|| alien ¦ of | end ¦ and of | aim,
Ad¦verse | each ¦ from the | oth¦er, | hea¦ven-high ¦ hell-¦deep re|moved,
Should rush ¦ into sight ¦ at once ¦ as he named ¦ the ineff¦able name,
And pile ¦ him a pal¦ace straight, ¦ to plea¦sure the prin¦cess he loved.
(Note the alliteration.)
At first, as you read this, you can, if your ears are accustomed to classical metres, have no doubt about the scheme. It is simply the regular elegiac couplet "accentually" rendered in English, with the abscission of the last syllable of the hexameter—a catalectic hexameter and a pentameter acatalectic. For the first four lines of the first octave there is no doubt at all. But when you get on to the second half you are pulled up. In the fifth and sixth lines the pentameter seems to have got to the first place, and the seventh is no more a hexameter than the eighth is its proper companion. For a moment you may fancy that this was intended—that the poet meant octaves of two different parts. But when you look at the other stanzas you will find that this is by no means the case. Truncated elegiac cadence appears, reappears, disappears in the most bewildering fashion, till you recognise—sooner or later according to your prosodic experience—that it was only simulated cadence after all, a sort of leaf-insect rhythm, and that the whole thing (as marked by the dotted scansion lines) is in six-foot anapæsts equivalenced daringly, but quite legitimately, with monosyllabic and dissyllabic feet.
(f) W. Morris ("The Wind"):
Ah! | no, no, | it is no|thing, sure|ly no|thing, at all,
On|ly the wild-|going wind | round | by the gar|den wall,
For the dawn | just now | is break|ing, the wind | begin|ning to fall.
Wind, wind, | thou art | sad, art | thou kind?
Wind, | wind, | unhap|py! thou | art blind,
Yet still | thou wan|derest | the lil|y-seed | to find.
(First three lines six-foot (trimeter) anapæsts with full substitution. Refrain a graded "wheel" of four, four or five, and six iambic feet.)