_And réassémbling óur afflícted pówers._ Milton, Parad. L. i. 186.
§ =83.= With regard to modulation, too, the lines with diaeresis differ from those without it. In lines with diaeresis all syllables or words with a rhythmic accent upon them are pronounced with nearly the same stress, while in lines without diaeresis the difference between the accented syllables is more noticeable. The two following examples taken from Milton's _Paradise Lost_ will serve to illustrate this, the difference of stress being indicated by different numbers under the accented syllables:
_Had cást him óut from Héaven with áll his hóst_ 0 1 0 2 0 2 0 2 0 2
_And réassémbling óur afflícted pówers._ 0 1 0 2 0 1 0 3 0 2
As a general rule, the syllables which stand in an arsis are, just because they bear the metrical stress, of course more strongly accented than those which stand in a thesis.
Occasionally, however, a thesis-syllable may be more strongly accented than an arsis-syllable in the same line which only carries the rhythmical accent, but neither the word-accent nor the logical accent of the sentence.
Thus in the following line from _Paradise Lost_--
the word _grand_, although it stands in a thesis, is certainly, because of the rhetorical stress which it has, more strongly accented than the preceding word _our_ or the syllable _-ble_, both of which have the rhythmical accent. Milton's blank verse abounds in such resolved discords, as they might be called. In not a few cases, however, they remain unresolved. This occurs chiefly in lines where the short unaccented syllables or unimportant monosyllabic words must be lengthened beyond their natural quantity in order to fit in with the rhythm of the verse, as in the following lines:
_Of Thámuz yéarly wóunded: thé love-tále._ Par. L. i. 452.
_Únivérsal repróach far wórse to béar._ Par. L. vi. 34.
On the other hand long syllables standing in a thesis may be shortened without harshness, e.g. the words _brought_ and _our_ in the following line:
_Brought déath intó the wórld and áll our wóe._
§ =84.= With regard to the treatment of the rhythm the Middle English even-beat metres in some respects are considerably different from the Modern English metres, the reason being that the earlier poets, as yet inexperienced in the art of composing in even-beat measures, found it more difficult than Modern English poets to make the rhythmic accent coincide with the word-accent and the syntactic-accent (cf. pp. 126-7, 134).
