ABSTRACT
To undertake an account of the major metrical forms of a language is to attempt a description and explanation of something with which readers of poetry in that language are already deeply familiar; the only proper test of the foregoing chapters, therefore, lies well beyond the covers of this book. But before handing over a set of newly designed tools, it is common practice to offer potential users a glimpse of them at work, however artificial the showroom environment in which the demonstration takes place. The examples in this chapter constitute a fairly random selection from the range of verse forms employed in English poetry, unavoidably wrenched from the contexts which give them a large part of their value and meaning, and discussed with regard to one or two aspects of the contribution made by rhythm to the total poetic effect. In arranging these examples, I have paid no attention to chronology, in the belief that the juxtaposition of comparable uses of rhythm from different periods would be more illuminating than a historical survey. In the chapter as a whole, and in the individual sections, the order is roughly from freer to stricter forms, but the disparate ingredients of poetic rhythm prevent any possibility of linear progression. The scansions given are not intended to be complete or definitive; in particular, I have often shown only one metrical realisation where an indefinite stress implying a range of possibilities would have been more accurate, but also more complicated, and irrelevant to the point at issue. Although my concern, strictly speaking, is with metrical verse, I begin with two examples of nonmetrical verse which draw on some of the resources of regular rhythmic form.
