Len, your comment that Hope elides a lot is apparently in response to Kate's mention of Hope's 11-syllable lines. I hope you are not suggesting that there is something wrong with extra syllables. Is this a new rule that I've missed? Robert Frost, for one, threw many anapests into his later work to give it a more relaxed, conversational feel -- take a look at "Mowing". I've seen lines of iambic pentameter that stretched to 13 or 14 syllables.
Furthermore, you can't assume that elisions are there unless they are indicated by the author.
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