In these verses, and in all English verses, there are no spondees, or feet consisting of two strong syllables. No foot in English metre has more than one strong syllable, and the weak syllables are appended to the strong ones, and swept along with them in the current of the metre. The equality between a trissyllable and a consecutive dissyllable foot, which the metre requires, is preserved by adding strength to the short syllable, so as to preserve the balance. Thus, when we say——
Bear my heart to my mistress dear,
There is a strength given to bear, and mistress, which makes them metrically balance carry and conqueror in this verse,
Carry my heart to my conqueror dear.
It must be observed, however, that the proportion between heavy and light, or strong and weak, in syllables, is not always the same. When a dissyllable foot occurs in the place of a trissyllable one, in a metre of a generally trissyllabic character, the light syllable may be conceived as standing in the place of two, and is therefore more weighty than the light syllables of the trissyllabic feet. Thus, if we say—
“Tell her it lived upon smiles and wine,”
the and is more weighty than it would be, if we were to say—
“Tell her it lived upon smiles and on wine.”
And if again we say—
“Tell her it liv’d on smiles and on wine,”