Than to fóllow the rúles of románces.
Poets, vii. 513.
Another specimen of the same rhythm, very artistically handled (cf. Metrik, i, § 226) is Charles Wolfe’s well-known poem The Burial of Sir John Moore. The same metre also occurs with masculine rhymes.
§ 192. The six-foot iambic-anapaestic verse sometimes occurs in Modern English poets, as Tennyson, The Grandmother, Maud, &c., Robert Browning, Abt Vogler, Mrs. Browning, Confessions, Swinburne, Hymn to Proserpine, &c.
We quote the following verses from Tennyson’s Maud to illustrate this metre, which, however, in consequence of the fluctuating proportion of iambic and anapaestic measures occurring in it is handled very differently by different poets (cf. Metrik, ii, § 227):
Did he flíng himself dówn? who knóws? | for a vást speculátion had fáil’d,
And éver he mútter’d and mádden’d, | and éver wánn’d with despáir,
And óut he wálk’d when the wínd | like a bróken wórldling wáil’d,
And the flýing góld of the rúin’d wóodlands | dróve thro’ the áir.
The caesura is sometimes masculine after the third foot (as in lines 1 and 3), sometimes feminine in the fourth (line 2) or the fifth (line 4); so that its position is quite indeterminate. The rhymes are mostly masculine, but feminine rhymes are also met with, as e.g. in Mrs. Browning’s Confessions. Swinburne’s verses are printed in long lines, it is true, but they are broken into short lines by inserted masculine and feminine rhymes.