Occasionally, however, a thesis-syllable may be more strongly accented than an arsis-syllable in the same line which only carries the rhythmical accent, but neither the word-accent nor the logical accent of the sentence.
Thus in the following line from Paradise Lost—
Irreconcileable to our grand Foe,
the word grand, although it stands in a thesis, is certainly, because of the rhetorical stress which it has, more strongly accented than the preceding word our or the syllable -ble, both of which have the rhythmical accent. Milton’s blank verse abounds in such resolved discords, as they might be called. In not a few cases, however, they remain unresolved. This occurs chiefly in lines where the short unaccented syllables or unimportant monosyllabic words must be lengthened beyond their natural quantity in order to fit in with the rhythm of the verse, as in the following lines:
Of Thámuz yéarly wóunded: thé love-tále. Par. L. i. 452.
Únivérsal repróach far wórse to béar. Par. L. vi. 34.
On the other hand long syllables standing in a thesis may be shortened without harshness, e.g. the words brought and our in the following line:
Brought déath intó the wórld and áll our wóe.
§ 84. With regard to the treatment of the rhythm the Middle English even-beat metres in some respects are considerably different from the Modern English metres, the reason being that the earlier poets, as yet inexperienced in the art of composing in even-beat measures, found it more difficult than Modern English poets to make the rhythmic accent coincide with the word-accent and the syntactic-accent (cf. pp. 126–7, 134).