There is not wind enough to twirl
The one red leaf, the last of its clan,
That dances as often as dance it can,
Hanging so light and hanging so high

On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.

It has been said that the slow iambics in the first line suggest quiet night.

The second line is more drowsy. The spondee, "red leaf," makes the movement slow and halts the line. "Of its clan," anapest, however, imparts

movement.

In the third line, the iambics and anapests give more liveliness.

The fourth line is more rapid still, and in the fifth the iambus and three anapests correspond to the idea of restless movement.

Mr. Yeats's poem, The Lake Isle of Innisfall, is as wonderful for subdued tone-color as for expressive rhythm:

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfall,

And a small cabin build there of clay and wattles made; Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings.

Then midnight's all a glimmer and noon a purple glow And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore, While I stand on the roadway or on the pavements gray, I hear it in the deep heart's core.

Mr. Yeats's poem is a poetic embodiment of the homesickness of the exile or city dweller for his lonely birthplace, and the plaintive Celtic melancholy pervades it; but it is difficult to scan, and it is not improbable that if any one should construct the formula, the author would say nothing of the kind was in his mind. The beauty of the verse is almost as elusive as the form. Possibly there is a subtle connection between sentiment and embodiment which we cannot analyze. Possibly regular time-beats would not harmonize at all with the stifled sob in the speaker's heart. But the poem is at least an illustration of the connection between form and sentiment. The two accents on consecutive syllables in the middle of the verse, and so forth, give the lines a slow movement wonderfully expressive of plaintive memories.

"go now" "some peace" build ther',

The general principles relating to the effect of the different feet are:

Ist. Iambics alone give dignity and weight to the movement. For example:

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Cardinal Newman's hymn is another instance of the dignity imparted by successive iambics :

Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on.

The night is dark, and I am far from home
Lead Thou me on!

Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene, one step enough for me.

Some of the feet might be designated spondees as "Lead kind"—"Lead thou' "am far," but the larger number are unmistakably iambics.

2d. Trochees tend to give an effect of tripping lightness, as will be readily seen from the following extracts from Keats's Lines on the Mermaid Tavern:

Souls of poets dead and gone,
What elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Have ye tippled drink more fine
Than mine host's Canary wine?
Or are fruits of Paradise

Sweeter than those dainty pies
Of venison ? O generous food!
Drest as though bold Robin Hood
Would with his maid Marian

Sup and bowse from horn and can.

3d. The three-syllable feet-dactyl, amphibrach, and anapest-also tend to give animation and

FORMS OF ENG. POETRY-3

variety. As a rule they are used in combination with two-syllable feet and monosyllabic feet where the time is made equal by a pause after the accented syllable, which falls usually at the end of the line. Such monosyllabic feet occur in the extract from Keats given above. The three-syllable foot was used in popular poetry like the ballad from the earliest times, but was not much recognized in the poetry of culture till a later date. The Elizabethan Michael Drayton used three-syllable feet in his spirited ballad, The Battle of Agin

court:

Fair stood the wind from France
When we our sails advance,
Nor now to prove our chance,
Longer will tarry:

But putting to the main,

At Kaux the mouth of Seine,
With all his martial train,
Landed King Harry.

The three-syllable foot lends itself very naturally to poems of comedy. This may be seen in Goldsmith's Retaliation:

Who born for the universe narrowed his mind

And to party gave up what was meant for mankind,

and in the Haunch of Venison, conceived and expressed in the true comic spirit.

Hood's Miss Kilmansegg is another example of

the adaptability of the three-syllable foot, especially the anapest, to lively narration: -

Of "making a book," how he made a stir,
But never had written a line to her,

Once his idol and "Cara Sposa,"

And how he had stormed and treated her ill
Because she refused to go down to a mill
She didn't know where, but remembered still
That the miller's name was Mendoza.

How oft, instead of otto of rose,
With vulgar smells he offended her nose,
From gin, tobacco, and onion.

And then, how wildly he used to stare,
And shake his fist at nothing and swear,

And pluck by the handful his shaggy hair,
Till he looked like a study of Giant Despair
For a new edition of Bunyan.

The three-syllable foot is, however, not always comic, as witness the solemnity of Hood's Bridge of Sighs, where the repeated dactyls and the final accented syllable lend themselves to the dirgelike effect called for by the situation:

One more unfortunate,

Weary of breath,

Rashly importunate,

Gone to her death.

This, however, is a "tour de force." Triple rhymes have usually a jingling character that is well exemplified in Gilbert's songs. The great master of the