ABSTRACT
The accents on the monosyllabic words, “waves,” then “tides” and “flow,” then “strong” go from the end of the first line, the middle of the second, the beginning of the third. The break after the end of the second verse involves an enjambment from “and” to “strong.” The metre of “buffeted” and “our favour” begins and ends the cluster of lines more lightly, so Churchill alternates the short and long accents in the feet of the prose verse. English combines the syllabic counting of Romance languages and the accentual one of Germanic languages, thus making scansion in English a difficult matter. Iambic pentameter, a line of ten syllables with five iambic feet, that is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable which Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare employ so often and so well, is the most usual metre in English.
