Like golden lamps in a green night."
The emphasis is sometimes placed on the first syllable, as in the subjoined:—
"Fling but a stone—the giant dies."
"Smoothing the rugged brow of night."
The decasyllabic verse, however, will allow more fully of the illustration of the subjects of Accent and Pause.
In the meantime, a word, and only a word, requires to be said regarding verses of nine syllables. Such verses, in their normal and most natural shape, start with two short syllables, followed by a long one; and the same arrangement, repeated twice afterwards successively, completes the line. It has thus but three accented to six unaccented vowel-sounds. Few poets of any repute have used this measure extensively, if we except Shenstone, to whose style it gives an almost unique caste. For example—
"Not a pine in my grove is there seen,
But with tendrils of woodbine is bound;
Not a beech's more beautiful green,
But a sweet-briar entwines it around.