At the midnight, in the silence of the sleep-time,
When you set your fancies free—
Will they pass to where, by death, fools think, imprisoned
Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so,
—Pity me?
as an example of English Ionic a minore;[159] not (as it is taken by the present writer) as trochaic—
Ăt thĕ mīdnĭght | ĭn thĕ sīlĕnce | ŏf thĕ slēep-tī̆me;
not
Āt thĕ | midnī̆ght | īn thĕ | sīlĕnce | ōf thĕ | slēep-tī̆me.
Perhaps those who propose this have been a little bribed by conscious or unconscious desire to prevent "accenting" in and of; but no more need be said on this point. The trochees, or their sufficient equivalents, will run very well without any violent INN or OVV. But when the piece is examined by ear of body and ear of mind (for the mind's ear is as important as the mind's eye) it will be found that Ionic scansion is unsatisfactory. It is perhaps not utterly fatal to the first line (though it gives an unpleasantly "rocking-horsy" movement), and perhaps still less to the second, where the catalexis itself saves this effect to some extent. But the junction and severance of sense which it suggests in the third—
Wĭll thĕy pāss tō | whĕre, by̆ dēath, fōols | thĭnk, ĭmprīsōned,
is very ugly. And this same junction or severance becomes impossible in the short lines concluding the stanzas. To suit the Ionic measure these must run—
Pĭty̆ mē
Bĕĭng—whō?