Under | my bat|tlements. | ʌ Come, | you spirits,
where | spĭrīts, | though not actually impossible, would spoil the line in one way, and "come," as a monosyllabic foot, in another.
[20] The exceptions, and probably the only ones, are to be found, if anywhere, in some modern blank verse, where two tribrachs, or a tribrach and an iamb or anapæst, succeed each other.
[21] It is difficult to see how this effect can be avoided by those who think that accents or stresses, governing prosody, vary in Milton from eight to three.
[22] Having already called it "an odious piece of pedantry," the critic (Blackwood's Magazine, April 1849) adds: "What metre, Greek or Roman, Russian or Chinese, it was intended to imitate we have no care to inquire: the man was writing English and had no justifiable pretence for torturing our ears with verse like this."
[23] Such as "Under the Greenwood Tree."
[24] For cautions and additions, as well as explanations, see [Glossary], especially under "Foot," "Stress-unit," "Quantity," etc.