So xvi. l. 2, xx. l. 20, &c., and others again in which the syllable carried on is an accented one, as
‘Si femme porroit estre celestine,’ xxi. 2.
‘Jeo ne sai nomer autre, si le noun;’ xxiv. 1.
It must be noticed also that the poet occasionally uses the so-called epic caesura, admitting a superfluous unaccented syllable after the second foot, as
‘Et pensetz, dame, de ceo q’ai dit pieça,’ ii. 3.
‘Qe mieulx voldroie morir en son servage,’ xxiii. 2.
So with dame, dames, xix. l. 20, xx. l. 13, xxxvii. l. 18, xlvi. l. 15[K]; and with other words, xxv. l. 8, &c., aime, xxxiii. l. 10, nouche, xxxviii. l. 23, grace, xliv. l. 8, fame. In xx. 1 the same thing occurs exceptionally in another part of the line, the word roe counting as one syllable only, though it is a dissyllable in Mir. 10942. Naturally the termination -ée, as in iii. 2,
‘La renomée, dont j’ai l’oreile pleine,’
does not constitute an epic caesura, because, as observed elsewhere, the final e in this case did not count as a syllable in Anglo-Norman verse.
On the whole we may say that Gower treats the caesura with much the same freedom as is used in the English verse of the period, and at the same time he marks the beat of his iambic verse more strongly than was done by the contemporary French poets.