§ 90. Unaccented extra syllables are found also before a caesura or at the end of the line. In the former case they constitute what is known as epic caesura, in the latter they form feminine or double endings (if there is only one extra syllable) or tumbling endings (if there are two extra syllables). In both cases this irregularity is softened or excused, so to say, by the pause, except where the accented or masculine ending of the hemistich is required by the very nature of the metre, viz. in the first acatalectic half of the Septenary line. It does, however, not unfrequently occur in some Early Middle English poems written in Septenary metre, e.g. in the Moral Ode and several others, but this may be only owing to want of skill or carelessness on the part of the authors of these poems. The following example taken from the Moral Ode may serve to illustrate this:
Nis nán wítnesse éal se múchel, | se mánnes ágen héorte. 114.
In the Ormulum irregularities of this kind never occur, a certain proof that Orm thought them metrically inadmissible, and felt that an extra syllable at the end of the first hemistich would disturb the flow of the rhythm.
Epic caesura certainly is more in place, or at any rate more common, in other kinds of verse, especially in the Middle English Alexandrine formed after the Old French model, e.g.:
Untó the Ínglis kínges, | þat hád it ín þer hónd.
Robert Mannyng, Chron. p. 2, l. 4.
In the four-foot and five-foot rhymed verse, and especially in blank verse, it is of frequent occurrence:
Why thís a fántom, | why thése orácles. Chauc. H. of F. 11.
To Cáunterbúry, | with fúl devóut coráge. id. Prol. 22.
What shólde he stúdie | and máke hym séluen wóod?