The gates that now

Stood open wide, belching outrageous flame

Far into chaos.

-Paradise Lost, 10: Milton.

Notice, too, the abrupt effects occasioned by the three unaccented syllables Are the in-, and the two With im-, in the following:

I'll cavil on the ninth part of a hair.

Are the indentures drawn? shall we be gone?

-1 Henry IV., iii., 1: Shakespear.

On a sudden open fly,

With impetuous recoil and jarring sound

Th' infernal doors.

-Paradise Lost, 2: Milton.

Abruptness is sometimes characteristic of the entire metre of a poem. In these cases, it is usually produced in connection with the pauses between the lines. At times it results from ending one line with an accented syllable, and beginning the next with another, as in these :

Every day brings a ship,

Every ship brings a word;

Well for those who have no fear,

Looking seaward well assured
That the word the vessel brings

Is the word they wish to hear.

Here let us sport,
Boys, as we sit.
Laughter and wit
Flashing so free.

Life is but short;
When we are gone,
Let them sing on

Round the old tree.

-Letters: Emerson.

-The Mahogany Tree: Thackeray.

Forward the light brigade!

Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldiers knew
Some one had blundered;
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of death

Rode the six hundred.

-Charge of the Light Brigade: Tennyson.

Lo, the leader in these glorious wars
Now to glorious burial slowly borne,
Followed by the brave of other lands.
He on whom from both her open hands
Lavish honor showered all her stars.

-Ode on the Duke of Wellington: Tennyson.

Up the street came the rebel tread,
Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.

Under his slouched hat, left and right
He glanced the old flag met his sight.

"Halt!"-the dust-brown ranks stood fast.
"Fire!"-out blazed the rifle blast.

-Barbara Frietchie: Whittier.

At times, this abrupt effect is produced by ending a line with an unaccented syllable and beginning the next with another one, e. g.:

As she lay on her death-bed,

The bones of her thin face, boys,

As she lay on her death-bed,

I don't know how it be, boys,

When all 's done and said;

But I see her looking at me, boys,

Wherever I turn my head.

-Tommy's Dead: Dobell.

The fountains mingle with the river,

And the rivers with the ocean;

The winds of heaven mix forever

With a sweet emotion.

-Love's Philosophy: Shelley.

With deep affection

And recollection

I often think of

Those Shandon bells;

Whose sound so wild would,

In the days of childhood,
Fling round my cradle

Their magic spells.

-The Bells of Shandon: F. Mahony.

They lock them up and veil and guard them daily;
They scarcely can behold their male relations;
So that their moments do not pass so gaily

As is supposed the case with northern nations.

-Beppo: Byron.

As characteristic abruptness in verse is produced in connection with the pauses at the ends of the lines, the shorter the lines are, the more frequent are the instances of abrupt force, and the more do the verses seem to manifest the sort of nervous energy which this represents. Compare the quotations above in which the lines are long with those in which they are short; or compare the two following stanzas:

Where corpse-light

Dances bright,

Be it by day or night,

Be it by light or dark,

There shall corpse lie stiff and stark.

-Halcro's Verses in The Pirate: Scott.

Not in vain the distance beacons, Forward, forward let us range,
Let the old world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change.
-Locksley Hall: Tennyson.

This latter couplet has almost the effect of perfect regularity of rhythm, which, as has been said, characterizes

metre corresponding to smooth force, representing therefore continuity, satisfaction, gentleness, delight, such, for instance, as one would naturally have in the tender, lovely, beautiful, grand, or sublime. In all the following quotations it will be noticed that the final syllable of each line joins without a break the rhythm of the following line. They all furnish illustrations of the poetic equivalent for smooth force.

And she looked like a queen in a book that night,

With a wreath of pearl in her raven hair,

And the brooch on her breast so bright.

-Aux Italiens: Lytton.

Our bugles sang truce, for the night cloud had lowered,
And the sentinal stars set their watch in the sky,
And thousands had sunk on the ground overpowered,
The weary to sleep and the wounded to die.

-The Soldier's Dream: Campbell.

Here is the same in our regular English blank verse:

So all day long the noise of battle rolled
Among the mountains by the winter sea,
Until King Arthur's table, man by man,
Had fallen in Lyonesse about their lord.

-The Idyls of the King: Tennyson.

Abrupt and smooth poetic effects, corresponding to those of imitative elocution, have been noticed often, and scarcely need mention here. The following are abrupt : The pilgrim oft

At dead of night 'mid his oraison hears
Aghast the voice of time-disparted towers,
Tumbeling all precipitate down-dash'd
Rattling around, loud thundering to the moon.