In a message dated 5/3/2010 4:22:22 PM Central Daylight Time, MRoth@MESSIAH.EDU writes:
RSG: It's beautifully ironic that line 984 (which stretches out as one of the visually longest lines in the poem) is only 9 syllables long, perhaps ironically signaling (it is VN's irony!) the short time that Shade has left.
MR: I don't think 984 is only 9 syllables. I assume you are counting "Poems" as one syllable. Yet line 960 (unless it too is 9 syllables) seems to count "Poems" as two syllables. Since "poems" can legitimately be scanned as either one or two syllables, shouldn't PF's very consistent 10-syllable pattern lead us to read it as 2 syllables?
Totally my mistake. I was counting "poems" as two syllables and still came up with nine. I think I was having a brain freeze, leaving "back" out. Perhaps I too am mentally disintegrating.
As for the "Newport frill" I must have come across it somewhere but can't find it now. "Newgate frill" makes sense, though.
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