"There is a path on the sea's azure floor"
the third foot is counted a pyrrhic and the fourth a spondee.[61]
One may get, then, from a table of this sort, a general view of the character of any particular piece of verse, in respect to the poet's preference for run-on lines, for feminine endings, for breaking the verse into two equal parts, for varying the cesura, or for substituting exceptional feet. The description would be more nearly complete if there were also indicated the places in the verse where substituted feet occur; a trochee in the second foot is a very different thing from one in the first; but it is difficult to tabulate facts of this order without complicating one's results beyond the point of serviceable clearness.
Some students of verse are doubtless offended by the use of statistics in connection with a subject of this kind; and it is easy to ridicule the obvious incongruity of mathematical methods and poetry. A recent magazine critic makes merry over certain statistical studies in rhythm, carried on in a laboratory by recording the beats in nursery-rimes on the one hand and in hymns on the other. "There is a certain class of problems," he observes most justly, "whose external aspects may possibly yield to statistical tabulation, but which in the last resort must be spiritually discerned."[62] Poetry is unquestionably of this class. Yet this would not seem to forbid the study, by scientific methods, of those "external aspects" admittedly susceptible of tabulation. One is not likely to recommend elementary students to count trochees and cesuras in order to increase their appreciation of good verse. But when one comes to the point of generalizing as to the laws or history of verse-forms, it is well to have a method of correction, representable in figures black and white, for the vague impressions which are all that appreciative reading can give. Perhaps the real service of such a method as has just been described is to prevent one from making hasty generalizations which statistics will not support.
Obviously the same system can be applied to blank verse, with the omission of the second category in the table. A convenient method of making such a study is to use sheets of paper ruled for twenty-five lines and seven columns. Each horizontal line represents a line of verse analyzed. The columns are headed "Cesura," "T," "P," "S," "A," "Run-on," and "Fem. Ending." A cesural pause between the third and fourth syllables is indicated by the figures 3/4 in the first column. A trochee in the first foot is indicated by the figure 1 in the "T" column; a spondee in the fourth foot by the figure 4 in the "S" column; and so on. A simple check-mark in the sixth or seventh column indicates respectively a case of enjambement or of feminine ending. When the tabulation is complete, one can easily note the proportion of run-on lines and exceptional cesuras, and can also determine at a glance not only the number of exceptional feet but the parts of the verse in which they occur.
In the following table the figures regarding the couplets of Spenser are based on his Mother Hubbard's Tale; those relating to Joseph Hall, on the Satires of his Virgidemiarum (see p. [182]); those relating to Leigh Hunt, on The Story of Rimini; those relating to Keats, on Endymion; to Browning, on Sordello.
| Chaucer (ab. 1385) | Spenser (1591) | Joseph Hall (1597) | Jonson (1616) | Waller (ab. 1650) | Dryden (ab. 1680) | Pope (ab. 1725) | Leigh Hunt (1816) | Keats (1818) | Browning (1840) | |
| Run-on Lines | 16 | 14 | 10 | 26 | 16 | 11 | 4 | 13 | 40 | 58 |
| Run-on Couplets | 7 | 4 | 1 | 8 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 25 | 27 |
| Medial Cesura | 33 | 31 | 37 | 48 | 50 | 52 | 47 | 46 | 53 | 30 |
| No Cesura | 58 | 64 | 58 | 29 | 42 | 40 | 44 | 35 | 27 | 25 |
| Variant Cesura | 9 | 5 | 5 | 23 | 8 | 8 | 9 | 19 | 20 | 45 |
| Feminine Endings | 64 | 6 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 6 | 6 | 0 |
| [a]Trochees | 15 | 13 | 18 | 22 | 23 | 15 | 25 | 29 | 29 | 34 |
| [a]Pyrrhics | 26 | 29 | 24 | 35 | 46 | 46 | 27 | 40 | 37 | 34 |
| [a]Spondees | 0 | 13 | 14 | 18 | 14 | 1 | 11 | 9 | 19 | 19 |
| [a]Anapests | 4 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 |
[a] No account is taken in the table of more than a single occurrence of the same exceptional foot in any one line.
FOOTNOTES:
[60] Here a word of caution is needed. It will be observed that the regularly balanced line of the classical couplet requires not only a medial pause, but also a pause at the end. Hence where we find, as in the verse of Keats, a large number of medial cesuras but at the same time a very large number of "run-on" lines, the characteristic effect of the medial pause is almost entirely lost, and the number of medial pauses is not significant.