Fór of batáille | the fínal énde is pés. Praise of Peace, 66.
A decline in the technique of the five-foot verse begins with Lydgate and Hoccleve.
These writers deprived the caesura of its mobility and admitted it almost exclusively after the second beat. Hoccleve uses hardly any caesuras but the masculine and lyric, whilst in Lydgate’s verse epic caesura is often met with (cf. p. [211]). Both indulge in the licences of initial truncation and omission of the unaccented syllable after the caesura (cf. l. c.) as well as level stress and the admission of several unaccented syllables at the beginning of the verse and internally; there are even cases of the omission of unaccented syllables in the middle of the verse:
Of hárd márble | they díde anóther máke. Min. P., p. 85, 24.
The slight license of inversion of accent is also taken advantage of.
Stephen Hawes and Barclay again imparted to this line greater freedom with regard to the caesura. And yet the metre exhibits under their hands, in consequence of the frequent occurrence of disyllabic initial and internal theses, a somewhat uneven rhythm.
The ablest of the successors of Chaucer, in technique as in other respects, are the Scots: Blind Harry, Henrysoun, King James I, Douglas, and Dunbar. The verse of Dunbar, in particular, stands on an equality with Chaucer’s in rhythmical euphony, while David Lyndesay often struggles with difficulties of form, and, by frequent use of level stress, offends against the first principle of even-beat rhythm, viz. the coincidence of the metrical accent with the natural accentuation of the word and sentence.
§ 157. In Modern English the rhymed five-foot verse remains essentially the same as in the Middle English period. Feminine rhymes are indeed rarer than in Middle English poetry in consequence of the disuse of flexional endings.
For the same reason, and owing to the advance in technical execution, the epic caesura is also rarer. Still, examples of this as well as of the other kind of caesuras employed by Chaucer are found in Modern English:
I. The níghtingále | with féathers néw she síngs. Sur. p. 3.