Re: Poetry: alliteration

Nik, don't you usually give content words more stress than function
words?  "wilt," "thou," "the," "that," and "was," are all low-content,
bleached, very common, what are usually called function words, and
"learn," "lore," "long," and "secret" are all high content,
unbleached, less common, content words.  I find myself naturally
stressing the latter.

Same with of the ... that ... from a .... vs. five..came..far
country.

The way you're reading it seems rather singsong; perhaps you are
reading it too much under the influence of iambic pentameter and
whatnot and bring to it too strong an expectation of daDUm daDUM
daDUMs?

Ed

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                       edheil@postmark.net
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Nik Taylor wrote:

> John Cowan wrote:
> > >   Wilt thou learn the lore / that was long secret
> > >   of the Five that came / from a far country?
> >
> > Note how this fits the rules: the stressed syllables of the first line
> > are "learn", "lore", "long", "sec", showing double alliteration,
> > and "Five", "came", "far", "coun", showing crossed alliteration.
> > Also, most of the unstressed syllables are in the left half.  The /
represents
> > the pause
>
> I can never get the stresses right.  I read that as (using capitals for
> stressed syllables):
> WILT thou LEARN the LORE that WAS long SECret
> of the FIVE that CAME FROM a far COUNtry
> and on that second verse, I initially read it "...from A far COUNtry"
> before rereading it.
>
> Trying the stresses you assigned just sounds bizarre to me, especially
> the "long secret".
>
> Are there any rules of thumb for figuring out where they wanted you to
> put the stresses?