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BLANK VERSE. |
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(7.) That were an ignominy and shame beneath This downfall.
Sole Eve, associate sole, to me beyond Compare above all living creatures dear.
These prepositions are dissyllables ; the smaller seldom, if ever, occur at the end of a line. We find, but very rarely, the auxiliary separated from its verb:
That with reiterated crimes he might Heap on himself damnation.
And once a compound epithet is divided at the end of a verse:
Ophion, with Eurynome, the wide-Encroaching Eve perhaps.
All these qualities enumerated above appear throughout Milton's versification, which indeed he himself has described in his note prefixed to the Paradise Lost, in these words, " True musical delight consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another." Such, according to his judgment, are the essential elements to good verse, and by due attention to what he here laid down he attained to his distinguished eminence in this, which is the highest species of English versification. |
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