Similar combinations, still freer, with frequent anacrusis as well, are characteristic of Swinburne's Hesperia; e. g.—
Shrill | shrieks in our | faces the | blind bland | air that was | mute as a | maiden,
Stung into | storm by the | speed of our | passage, and | deaf where we | past;
And our | spirits too | burn as we | bound, thine | holy but | mine heavy | laden,
As we | burn with the | fire of our | flight; ah, | love, shall we | win at the | last?
The first line of a poem is not always a good criterion of the metre of the whole poem—though Poe declared that it should be. For Tennyson's The Higher Pantheism is chiefly in triple falling rhythm, but it begins
The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains.
The first stanza of Campbell's famous Battle of the Baltic runs:
Of Nelson and the North,
Sing the glorious day's renown,
When to battle fierce came forth
All the might of Denmark's crown,
And her arms along the deep proudly shone;
By each gun the lighted brand,
In a bold determined hand,
And the Prince of all the land
Led them on.
Here the first line might be 3-stress or 2-stress; the second, third, fourth, sixth, seventh, eighth might have three stresses or four; the fifth five or six; the ninth two or one. It is not, in fact, until we reach the
Again! again! again!
of the fourth stanza that we are sure how the poem ought to be read. But Campbell was not a faultless artist. There is the same metrical ambiguity, however, in Tennyson's