Re: Poetry: alliteration
| From: | Padraic Brown <pbrown@...> |
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| Date: | Friday, January 7, 2000, 3:43 |
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On Thu, 6 Jan 2000, 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".
It sounded perfectly natural to me. Were I to read the lines as prose,
John's stresses are exactly where I'd stress in speech.
Were I to read it "metricly", as if it were written in poetic feet,
I'd end up with what you gave - a nice and regular TUMtee TUMtee TUM
kind of rhythm. This because we were never taught _how_ to read
English metric poetry properly, so I always end up with some kind of
sad farce.
>
>Are there any rules of thumb for figuring out where they wanted you to
>put the stresses?
I'd try simply reading the lines as naturally as possible. Take the
following; in which I mark where the stress falls naturally for me:
Pearl of delight that a prince doth please
^^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^^^^ ^^^^^^
to grace in gold enclosed so clear,
^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^^
I vow that from over orient seas
^^^ ^ ^^ ^^^^
never proved I any in price her peer.
^^ ^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^^
John can feel free to correct, but I'd be willing to bet I'm pretty
close with the stresses.
Padraic.