§ =137.= The irregularity of the structure of the Septenary rhyming line of the _Moral Ode_ stands in marked contrast with the regularity of the rhymeless Septenary verse of the _Ormulum_. The first hemistich here is always acatalectic, the second catalectic, and the whole line has never more nor less than fifteen syllables.
Hence the only metrical licences that occur here are elision, syncope, and apocope of the unaccented _e_ of some inflexional endings, and the very frequent admission of level stress in disyllabic and polysyllabic words, which are to be found in all places in the line:
_Icc þátt tiss Énnglissh háfe sétt | +E+nnglísshe ménn to láre, Icc wáss þær þ[æ´]r I crísstnedd wáss | +O+rrmín bi náme némmnedd, Annd ícc +O+rrmín full ínnwarrdlí[gh] | wiþþ múð annd éc wiþþ hérrte._ Dedic. 322-7.
In all such cases, in the versification of Orm, whose practice is to count the syllables, there can only be a question of level stress, not of inversion of accent. _Ennglisshe_ at the beginning of the second hemistich of the above line, 322, is no more an example of inversion of rhythm than in the hemistich _Icc háfe wénnd inntill +E+nnglíssh_ l. 13.
§ =138.= After the _Moral Ode_ and the _Ormulum_ the Septenary often occurs in combination with other metres, especially the Alexandrine, of which we shall speak later on.
In some works of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the Septenary was, however, employed in a fairly unmixed form, as, for instance, in the _Lives of Saints_, ed. Furnivall, 1862, the _Fragment of Popular Science_, ed. Wright in _Popular Treatises on Science_, London, 1841, and several others.
The most important deviation from the Septenary of Orm and of the _Moral Ode_ is the frequent occurrence of long lines with a masculine instead of the usual feminine ending. Both forms are to be found in the opening lines of the _Fragment of Popular Science_:
_The rí[gh]te pút of hélle ís | amídde the úrþe wiþínne, Oure Lóverd þát al mákede iwís, | quéinte ís of gýnne, Héuene and úrþe ymákede iwís, | and síþþe alle þíng þat ís, Úrpe is a lútel húrfte | a[gh]én héuene iwís._
It may fairly be assumed that the structure of the Alexandrine (which, according to French models, might have either a masculine or a feminine ending) may have greatly furthered the intrusion of monosyllabic feet into the Septenary verse, although the gradual decay of the final inflexions may likewise have contributed to this end. For the rest, all the rhythmic licences of the Septenary occurring in the _Moral Ode_ are also to be met with here; as, for instance, the suppression of the anacrusis in the first hemistich of l. 4 of the passage quoted, and in the second of l. 2, and the omission of the unaccented syllable in the second hemistich of the fourth line, the inversion of accent and disyllabic thesis in the first hemistich of the third line, and other licences, such as the anapaestic beginning of the line, &c., in other places in these poems (cf. _Metrik_, i, p. 246).