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ORTHOMETRY. |
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In verses of this class, the rhyming syllables may be as many as follow the last accented syllable of a verse, including that syllable. We mean here that verse which ends with polysyllables. Our language has not many polysyllables where the accent is thrown farther back than the antepenultimate ; and therefore we have but few rhymes of four syllables, and these are only met with in whimsical and far-fetched expressions.
When more words than one are taken to make up the rhyme, it gives opportunity, by the combination, to frame new rhymes, the novelty of which is pleasing, as in the following by Butler:
The oyster-women lock'd their fish up, And trudg*d away, to cry No Bishop.
Hudibras.
And again—
You have said my eyes are blue ; There may be a fairer hue,
Perhaps—and yet It is surely not a sin If I keep my secrets in—
Violet
Mortimer Collins.
To produce this novelty is a species of wit, though of an inferior order, yet such as cannot be exercised without great facility in composition and command of language. There are poems of a very modern date which will prove this assertion, whence we conclude that our contemporaries, some of them |
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