Although omission of the anacrusis is on the whole unfrequent, it yet undoubtedly occurs (cf. [p. 137], [footnote]):
Ál besmótered | wíth his hábergeóun. Prol. 76.
Gýnglen ín a | whístlyng wýnd as clére.ib. 170.
Disyllabic theses are often found initially and internally.
With a thrédbare cópe | as is a póure schóler. Prol. 262.
Of Éngelónd, | to Cáunterbúry they wénde. ib. 16.
Similar rhythmical phenomena are caused by the slurring of syllables, such, e.g., as Many a, tharray from the array, &c., &c., in regard to which reference should be made to the chapter on the metrical value of syllables.
Level stress occurs most frequently in Chaucer in rhyme: fifténe: Trámasséne 61–2; daggére: spere 113–14; thing: writýng 325–6. Enjambement and rhyme-breaking are used by him with great skill (cf. §§ [92], [93])
§ 156. In later Middle English this metre on the whole retained the same character, and individual poets vary from one another only in a few points.
Of Gower’s five-foot verse only short specimens are preserved. Like his four-foot verse, they are very generally regular. Inversion of accent is the licence he most often employs. Gower uses almost exclusively the masculine caesura after the second foot and the lyric caesura in the third foot. But epic caesura also occasionally occurs in his verse: