II. The sóte séason | that búd and blóom forth bríngs. ib. p. 3.
III. Itsélf from trávail | óf the dáys unrést. ib. p. 2.
IV. The sún hath twíce brought fórth | his ténder gréen.
V. He knóweth how gréat Atrídes, | that máde Troy frét.
Wyatt, 152.
VI. At lást she ásked sóftly, | whó was thére. ib. 187.
In positions nearer to the beginning or the end of the line the different kinds of caesura are also rare in Modern English, and occur mostly in consequence of enjambements.
In Wyatt’s poems epic caesuras are found in comparatively large number; in Spenser, on the other hand, they are probably entirely lacking, owing to a finer feeling for the technique of the verse.
Inversions of accent occur in the usual positions and at all times with all the poets. Level stress, on the other hand, is more frequently detected in such poets as do not excel in technical skill, as, for instance, in Wyatt and Donne, who also admit initial truncation, and more rarely the omission of a thesis in the middle of the line. In their poems disyllabic theses also often occur initially and internally, while more careful poets more rarely permit themselves these licences. To Wyatt’s charge must be laid further the unusual and uncouth licence of unaccented rhyme, such rhymes, for example, as begínnìng: eclípsìng, p. 56, 1–3; dréadèth: séekèth, inclósèd: oppréssèd 54, &c. In other poets this peculiarity is hardly ever found.
§ 158. In narrative poetry the five-foot verse rhyming in couplets, heroic verse, was a favourite metre. As a close in the sense coincides with that of each couplet, this metre tends to assume an epigrammatic tone, especially since enjambement seldom occurs after the Restoration. To avoid the monotony thus occasioned, many Restoration poets linked three verses together by one and the same rhyme, whereby the regular sequence of couplets was then interrupted wherever they pleased. Sometimes such threefold rhymes (triplets) serve the purpose of laying a special stress on particular passages, a practice which is, moreover, to be observed as early as in some contemporaries of Shakespeare, e.g. in Donne. A somewhat freer structure than that of the heroic verse is, as a rule, exhibited by the five-foot line when employed in poems in stanza form. In this verse a considerable part is played by enjambement. This also holds good for the rhymed five-foot verse employed in dramatic poetry, which usually rhymes in couplets, though alternate rhymes are occasionally used.