Iambs & spondees
Just a quick reply to Chris. Maybe our ears differ, but I don't hear any fewer than eight stresses in the Milton line, esp since the monosyllables in the usually unstressed positions feature hard consonants like k and g to ensure their emphasis. It's as wacky as Hopkins in "God's Grandeur":
"CRUSHED. WHY do MEN THEN NOW NOT RECK his ROD?"
Granted, Alcaics will never catch on much in English if they're not made easier to write (I don't imagine returning to the form often, which I tried mostly on a dare)--but they sure won't sound* much like Alcaics. There's a lot of loosening in contemporary Sapphics, and some of it is admirable (see, for example, Mary Jo Salter's "Roses and Mona Lisa" in her new & selected, in which she floats the dactyl around in the line), but I think there are lot of poems that purport to be Sapphics but really only emulate the form in their syllable count.
Jay
*By "sound," I mean in accentual English, as opposed to quantitative Greek.
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