Fi'ja la vi'sta' en los na'ipes,
Mie'ntras jue'gan a'l para'r;
Every word in Spanish has its individual word-accent: habí'a, habla'do. Now if we join these two words in a phrase, habí'a habla'do, we note that while each of the words still retains its individual word-accent, hablado is more strongly stressed than había. In addition to its word-accent hablado bears what we term a phrase-accent. In any line of verse some of the word-stresses are stronger than others, and these stronger stresses are termed rhythmic stresses. They correspond to the phrase-stresses of prose. The principal rhythmic stress is the last stress of the line. In general the rhythmic stress must coincide with a word-stress. It always does except where stress-shift comes into play. We have already seen that a stress-shift coinciding with the rhythmic stress is intolerable, and hiatus is preferred. It is very unharmonious for two stresses to fall together at the end of a verse:
Que estas torres llegué a ver (8)
This is a very bad verse, because a is dominant over é and brings about stress-shift, and the two consecutive syllables a and ver are both stressed. The result is unharmonious. A syllable bearing stress and standing immediately before the final stress is called an obstructing syllable (una sílaba obstruccionista). Every effort is made by a good poet to avoid such a cacophony. The above is a good example of one. I have emended llegué to llegue in the text.
A short verse can easily be spoken without pause, but above ten syllables it becomes necessary for the reader to rest somewhere within the line. The resting-place is called the caesural pause. The longer the verse, the greater its importance. It does not prevent synalepha. The stress immediately before the caesura must be the second most important rhythmic stress of the verse.
RIME AND ASSONANCE
The regularity of the beats in English verse is of itself sufficient to indicate when a line of poetry is ended, even though there be no rime to mark that end. Hence blank verse has been highly developed by English poets, and many, like Milton, have held it to be the noblest form of verse. Blank verse is impossible in French, because French with its lack of verbal stress has no other device than rime to mark the end of a verse. Without rime French blank verse would be indistinguishable from rhythmic prose. In Spanish the stress is not so heavy as in the Germanic languages, but, on the other hand, is much stronger than in French. Spanish blank verse is not unknown, but has never been cultivated with great success. It is evident that in this language too, lacking as it does regular rhythm in its versification, rime is much more necessary than in English. However, an occasional verso suelto, or blank verse, intermingled with rimed ones, is very common.
Two words rime with one another when there is identity of sound between the last stressed vowels and between any letters which may follow these vowels. Rime is masculine (in Spanish rima aguda) when the last syllables bear the stress: mal—cristal; or feminine when an unstressed vowel follows the stressed one (in Spanish rima llana): hermosura—locura. Inasmuch as b and v represent the same sound, they rime. The weak vowel of a diphthong is ignored for riming purposes; thus vuelo rimes with cielo. Good poets avoid obvious or easy rimes such as those yielded by flexional endings and suffixes. It is permissible to rime two identically-spelled words if they are in fact different words in meaning: ven (they see) rimes with vén (come).
Assonance is the identity of sound of two or more stressed vowels and the final following vowels, if there are any. In case consonants stand after the stressed vowel they are disregarded.