Its chief office is that of pause or termination; and here – at the end of a line – its use is easy, because there is no danger of misapprehending its value. We pause on it, by a seeming necessity, just as long as it has taken us to pronounce the preceding feet, whether iambuses, trochees, dactyls, or anapæsts. It is thus a variable foot, and, with some care, may be well introduced into the body of a line, as in a little poem of great beauty by Mrs. Welby:

 

I have | a lit | tle step | son | of on | ly three | years old. |

 

Here we dwell on the cæsura, son, just as long as it requires us to pronounce either of the preceding or succeeding iambuses. Its value, therefore, in this line, is that of three short syllables. In the following dactylic line its value is that of four short syllables.

 

Pale as a | lily was | Emily | Gray |

 

I have accentuated the cæsura with a dotted line ( ... ...) by way of expressing this variability of value.

I observed just now that there could be no such foot as one of two short syllables. What we start from in the very beginning of all idea on the topic of verse, is quantity, length. Thus when we enunciate an independent syllable it is long, as a matter of course. If we enunciate two, dwelling on both equally, we express equality in the enumeration, or length, and have a right to call them two long syllables. If we dwell on one more than the other, we have also a right to call one short, because it is short in relation to the other. But if we dwell on both equally and with a tripping voice, saying to ourselves here are two short syllables, the query might well be asked of us – »in relation to what are they short?« Shortness is but the negation of length. To say, then, that two syllables, placed independently of any other syllable, are short, is merely to say that they have no positive length, or enunciation – in other words that they are no syllables – that they do not exist at all. And if, persisting, we add any thing about their equality, we are merely floundering in the idea of an identical equation, where, x being equal to x, nothing is shown to be equal to zero. In a word, we can form no conception of a pyrrhic as of an independent foot. It is a mere chimera bred in the mad fancy of a pedant.

From what I have said about the equalization of the several feet of a line, it must not be deduced that any necessity for equality in time exists between the rhythm of several lines. A poem, or even a stanza, may begin with iambuses, in the first line, and proceed with anapæsts in the second, or even with the less accordant dactyls, as in the opening of quite a pretty specimen of verse by Miss Mary A. S. Aldrich.

 

The wa | ter li | ly sleeps | in pride |

Down in the | depths of the | azure | lake |

 

Here azure is a spondee, equivalent to a dactyl; lake, a cæsura.

I shall now best proceed in quoting the initial lines of Byron's »Bride of Abydos«:

 

Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle

Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime –

Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle

Now melt into softness, now madden to crime?

Know ye the land of the cedar and vine,

Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine,

And the light wings of Zephyr, oppressed with perfume,

Wax faint o'er the gardens of Gul in their bloom?

Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit

And the voice of the nightingale never is mute –

Where the virgins are soft as the roses they twine,

And all save the spirit of man is divine?

'Tis the land of the East – 'tis the clime of the Sun –

Can he smile on such deeds as his children have done?

Oh, wild as the accents of lovers' farewell

Are the hearts that they bear and the tales that they tell!

 

Now the flow of these lines (as times go) is very sweet and musical. They have been often admired, and justly – as times go, – that is to say, it is a rare thing to find better versification of its kind. And where verse is pleasant to the ear, it is silly to find fault with it because it refuses to be scanned. Yet I have heard men, professing to be scholars, who made no scruple of abusing these lines of Byron's on the ground that they were musical in spite of all law. Other gentlemen, not scholars, abused ›all law‹ for the same reason; and it occurred neither to the one party nor to the other that the law about which they were disputing might possibly be no law at all – an ass of a law in the skin of a lion.

The grammars said something about dactylic lines, and it was easily seen that these lines were at least meant for dactylic. The first one was, therefore, thus divided:

 

Know ye the | land where the | cypress and | myrtle |

 

The concluding foot was a mystery; but the prosodies said something about the dactylic ›measure‹ calling now and then for a double rhyme; and the court of inquiry were content to rest in the double rhyme, without exactly perceiving what a double rhyme had to do with the question of an irregular foot. Quitting the first line, the second was thus scanned:

 

Are emblems | of deeds that | are done in | their clime. |

 

It was immediately seen, however, that this would not do, – it was at war with the whole emphasis of the reading. It could not be supposed that Byron, or any one in his senses, intended to place stress upon such monosyllables as ›are,‹ ›of,‹ and ›their,‹ nor could ›their clime,‹ collated with ›to crime,‹ in the corresponding line below, be fairly twisted into any thing like a ›double rhyme,‹ so as to bring every thing within the category of the grammars. But farther these grammars spoke not. The inquirers, therefore, in spite of their sense of harmony in the lines, when considered without reference to scansion, fell back upon the idea that the ›Are‹ was a blunder, – an excess for which the poet should be sent to Coventry, – and, striking it out, they scanned the remainder of the line as follows:

 

–– emblems of | deeds that are | done in their | clime.