O|ver the moun|tain aloft | ran a rush | and a roll | and a roar|ing Down|ward the breeze | came malig|nant and leapt | with a howl | to the wa|ter, Roar|ing in cran|ny and crag | till the pil|lars and clefts | of the ba|salt Rang | like a god-|swept lyre.
And Mr. Swinburne did the same thing (see above) consciously.
XLVIII. MINOR IMITATIONS OF CLASSICAL METRES
When the | fierce North-|wind with his | airy | forces Bears up | the Bal|tic to a | foaming | fury, And the | red light|ning with a | storm of | hail comes Rushing a|main down.
This illustrates--as do the pieces which it, beyond all doubt, patterned, though in succession rather than directly (Cowper's "Hatred and Vengeance," Southey's "Cold was the Night Wind," and Canning's triumphant parody of this latter, the "Needy Knifegrinder")--the unyokeableness of classical metres--when not merely iambic, trochaic, or anapæstic--to English rhythm. The proper run of the Sapphic line is--
tumti-tumtum-tumtity-tumti-tum { -ti { -tum;
but this constantly in English, though not so much in the first line as elsewhere, changes itself into
{ -tum tumtity-tum { || tumtiti-titumty. { -ti
Mr. Swinburne has got it right, but only as a _tour de force_, and, as in line 2, not always quite certainly.
Saw the | white im|placable | Aphro|dite, Saw the | hair un|bound and the | feet un|sandalled Shine as | fire of | sunset on | western |waters, Saw the re|luctant.
But Southey and Canning always suggest the wrong:
Shē hăd nŏ ¦ hōme, thē̆ ¦ wōrld wăs ăll ¦ bĕfōre hĕr,
Stōry̆, sĭr? ¦ Blēss yŏu! ¦ Ī hăve nŏne ¦ tŏ tēll yŏu;
O migh|ty-mouthed | in|ventor of | harmonies, O skilled | to sing | of | Time or E|ternity, God-gift|ed or|gan-voice | of Eng|land, Milton, a | name to re|sound for | ages.
Hear, my be|loved, an | old Mi|lesian | story!-- High, and em|bosom'd in | congre|gated | laurels, Glimmer'd a temple upon a breezy headland; In the dim distance, amid the skiey billows, Rose a fair island; the god of flocks had blest it.
(These very pretty lines exhibit a most curious instance of the unconscious force of the prosodic genius of a language. Coleridge was a good classical scholar, and quite enough of a mathematician to know the difference between 11 and 12. Yet every one of these _hendeca_syllabics will be found to be a _dodeca_syllabic; the poet having substituted (as in English prosody is quite allowable) an initial dactyl for the dissyllabic foot of the original metre. Once more this shows the English _impatience_ of classical form.)