"
Or in the iambic we have an unaccented syllable followed by an accented,
as in--
"It was' the schoo'ner Hes'perus'
That sai'led the win'try sea'."
But if two syllables are so short that they can be uttered in the same
time as one, two syllables will satisfy the meter just as well as one.
Thus we have the following, in the same general met{r}e r as the
foregoing quotation:
"I stood' on the bridge' at mid'night,
As the clocks' were stri'king the hour'."
It is all a matter of time. If we were to place a syllable that
required a long time for utterance in a place where only a short time
could be given to it, we should seriously break the rhythmic flow;
and all the pauses indicated by punctuation marks are taken into
account, in the same way that rests are counted in music. The natural
pause at the end of a line of poetry often occupies the time of an
entire syllable, and we have a rational explanation of what has been
called without explanation "catalectic" and "acatalectic" lines.
The same principles govern the accenting of single words in a very large
degree, and must be taken into account in reading prose aloud.
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