Page:Poems of Anne Countess of Winchilsea 1903.djvu/95
line made up of monosyllables is not unusual in the work of any poet, but even in such cases Lady Winchilsea's use of monosyllables is excessive. In the second stanza of The Wit and the Beau there are twenty-four monosyllables before the first dissyllable is reached. There are frequent octosyllabic couplets with no dissyllables, as,
Cast on both so sweet a look.
Cloath me light and fresh as May.
There are also frequent pentameter couplets with but a single dissyllable, and some without even the one dissyllable, as,
As the first fleece, which on the Lamb does grow.
In the Poor Man's Lamb, a poem of fifty-seven lines, from which this couplet is taken, there are eight monosyllabic lines besides the couplet. Single pentameter monosyllabic lines may be counted by the hundred. Even Alexandrines are sometimes monosyllabic, as,
Urg'd him to keep his word and still he swore the same.
Though some of the monosyllabic lines have vowels and consonants so cunningly linked, or are so placed in connection with others of different composition that the ear is not conscious of any break in the general harmony, yet often the recurring monosyllables give an unpleasantly staccato effect, or they make the verse seem childish.
In a consideration of Lady Winchilsea's rhymes their correctness must, of course, be judged by the pronunciations current in her day. Certain variations from modern pronunciation are of especial interest. She almost invariably, for instance, rhymes "oi" or "oy" with "ī." We find the following as regular rhymes: join, coin + fine; join'd, coin'd + kind;