Gary: sorry to mix up my iambics and anapests! Was I confused by Browning’s regular use of both? Each of your examples
I SPRANG to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;
This saying good-bye on the edge of the dark
And cold to an orchard so young in the bark
starts with an iambic da-DUM before settling into three anapestic da-da-DUMs!
A browse of the whole poem indicates far more opening iambics than anapests.
In
’T was moonset at starting; but while we drew near
da-DUM-da-da-DUM-da-da-DUM-da-da-DUM
Browning seems to be deliberately avoiding the natural anapest:
It was moonset ....
da-da-DUM ...
‘T was is one of those abbreviations, seldom found outside literature, and specially designed to solve prosodic problems! But shuns the anapestic Browning to go iambic.
Taking the rest of this stanza, and assuming Browning knew how to pronounce Lokeren in Flemish (three syllables and much phlegm?) , we find opening anapests again outnumbered 4 to 2.
Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawn’d clear;
At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see;
At Düffeld, ’t was morning as plain as could be;
And from Mechelm church-steeple we heard the half chime,
So, Joris broke silence with, “Yet there is time!”
Is there a fancy Greek name for Browning’s 25/75% prosodic melange?
My main point remains: a tentative link between VN’s Exe-to-Wye trip and a popular Browning poem surely familiar to the author of Pale Fire. I would not, personally, wish to explore any further possible lexical or thematic connections, though others may well enjoy noting that six-line stanzas, death, frost, snow and HAZE occur in both works.
Stan Kelly-Bootle
On 25/02/2010 13:05, "Gary Lipon" <glipon@INNERLEA.COM> wrote:
On Feb 24, 2010, at 11:54 PM, Stan Kelly-Bootle wrote:
I SPRANG to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;
I gallop’d, Dirck gallop’d, we gallop’d all three ...
It rattles on breathlessly like this for 9 more stanzas with the same, relentlessly-rhyming tetrametric iambic sextets!
Opps, clearly anapestic:
as in:
He SPRANG to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle
or:
This saying good-bye on the edge of the dark
And cold to an orchard so young in the bark
–(yup)Frost, Good-bye, and Keep Cold