On Quantitative Metre 329pitch, but weight of voice emphasis; it is a brief hammer-stroke
of the voice from above which comes down on a long-vowel or a
short-vowel syllable and gives even to the latter a metrical length
and power which, when without stress, it does not naturally
have. This stroke can thus confer metrical length even on a very
short vowel or slightest short syllable, because it drives it firmly
in like a nail into the wall, so that other unstressed sounds
can hang loosely upon it. This provides a distinctive sound-
frame which can be generalised and so made into a metrical
base.
There can then be a pure stress scansion and pure stress me-
tres in their own right without any justification by accent. For in
stress metre proper the high accentual pitches are swallowed up
into stress; any other rise or fall of accentual inflexion is ignored,
— it is allowed to influence the rhythm but it does not determine
or affect the basic metrical structure. Accent can in this way
disappear altogether as a metrical base; stress replaces it. Here,
for example, are lines composed entirely of stress paeons —
I have wa|
ndered|in the va|
lleys|of E|
cstasy,|I have li|
stened|to themu|
rmur|and the pa|
ssion|of its strea|
ms,|I have stoo|
dup|on the mou|
ntains|of the Sple|
ndour,|I have spu|
na|round my spi|
rit|like a ga|
rment|the pu|
rple of|its skie|
s.It is evident that here there are accentual inflexions other than
those taken up into stress, on one syllable even a low pitch, but
because they are not reckoned as stresses, they do not count in
the metrical structure of the lines. Or there may be a still freer
stress metrification which rejects any scheme of regular feet and
refuses to recognise the necessity of a fixed number of syllables
either to the foot or the line; it regards only the fall of the stress
and is faithful to that measure alone.
Afa|
rsai|
l|on the uncha|
ngeable mo|
noto|
ne|of a slo|
wslu|
mbering sea|
.|