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End rime is uncommon, but we must beware of thinking that there is no rhythm, for that is a pronounced characteristic. Anglo-Saxon verse was intended to be sung, and hence rhythm and accent or stress are important. Stress and the length of the line are varied; but we usually find that the four most important words, two in each half of the line, are stressed on their most important syllable.
In the Canterbury Tales he uses lines of ten syllables and five accents each, and the lines run in couplets: His eyen twinkled in his heed aright As doon the sterres in the frosty night. The same musical measure, arranged in seven-line stanzas, but with a different rime, called the Rime Royal, is found in its most perfect form in Troilus.
The rime whitened his broad shoulders as he leaned on the wall, and in the moonlight the sprinkling of white hairs at his temples shone out from the black as if to mock this young passion that had possessed him. God's Little Mountain lay shrugged in slumber; the woods crouched like beaten creatures under the night; the small soft leaves hung limply in the frost.
It is written in an elaborate stanza combining meter and alliteration. At the end of each stanza is a rimed refrain, called by the French a "tail rime." We give here a brief outline of the story; but if the reader desires the poem itself, he is advised to begin with a modern version, as the original is in the West Midland dialect and is exceedingly difficult to follow.
When she received the letter from Rachel on the morrow, she handled it as a sacred thing. The frost held. A sun of pearl and fire rose over the hill, as the stars finally faded out in the winter morning, and a brilliant rime lay sparkling on all the pastures and on the slopes of the down.
"Fool!" one answered, "there may have been other boats." So they looked again, and beneath the thin coating of rime, found a mark in the mud by the Staithe, made by the prow of a large boat, and not far from it a hole in the earth into which a peg had been driven to make her fast.
The January afternoon was passing into night, the air was cold and still, so still that not a single twig of the naked beech-trees stirred; on the grass of the meadows lay a thin white rime, half frost, half snow; the firs stood out blackly against a steel-hued sky, and over the tallest of them hung a single star.
Not a bit of dust rose from the road, dew-wet and brown. The rime of the slight frost shone from the fences and grasses and stacked corn, like old age that strikes in a single night. Here and there a farmer could be seen pottering about the yards, or there was a pale curl of smoke rising from the chimney. The horse, loving these chill, exhilarating October mornings, went drumming along the road.
Donal shoemaker was filled with joy unutterable by the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. If only this state of things could be kept up with Ian back, and Mercy married to the chief! thought the mother. But it was not to be; that grew plainer every day. Mr.
He was certain that were it known he was English he would at once be stabbed and thrown overboard, for there was no hope of quarter; but he was for some time unable to devise any plan by which, even for a short rime, to conceal his nationality. He only knew a few words of Spanish, and would be detected the moment he opened his lips.
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