Carol, I would agree in general that accented
syllables should not be rhymed with unaccented
ones---but one mustn't be too doctrinaire. Such
rhymes have been done beautifully. Some very
fine poets find it permissible, or make it so.
And it is certainly permissible in translation,
where it is important to rhyme if the original is
rhymed---finding a rhyme in English is often very
difficult and an imperfect rhyme is better than
none at all (and better than changing the sense.)
And you must remember that the meter may have
already changed the accent of the word, as in
Hardy's word "outrollings" which must be pronounced
with accents on the first and third syllables (and
the third syllable is a rhyme). The meter alters
the pronunciation of words more than we think.
The example Sam raised is a good one. We pronounce
"inland" with an accent on the first syllable (and
so do the English, I believe), but Hardy makes you
shift a little. You don't say inLAND of course,
but the strict iambic drive of the poem (and to some
extent the quantity of the second syllable) makes us
hear it as an iamb---that is to say, we put the
speech stress on the first syllable but the metrical
accent on the second. Now you may say, how can there
be an iamb where the stress is mostly on the first
syllable? and I'd answer, it happens quite often
("Although they do not talk of it at school--"). I
have never seen it discussed in the prosody books,
but it exists nevertheless. For example, the line
from a Justice poem, "Like storm clouds in a troubled
sky"--clouds has more stress than in but
we still read the line iambically---the ear hears the
slight accent on in and is satisfied. I call
it a kind of inverted iamb, and it's fairly common.
(I've raised the question with several friends who are learned in matters of prosody, Justice for one, Edgar
Bowers and others, and they agreed that there is such
a phenomenon, an "inverted" iamb.
To answer Sam's other question, about Stourton Tower,
here is my note on the poem in my edition of Hardy's
SELECTED POEMS: "Hardy would certainly have heard the
roar of the guns from English battleships in the spring
of 1914: Dorchester is only seven miles north of the
coast. Each of the monuments named in the last stanza
moves progressively farther back in time and space.
Stourton Tower commemorates the great victory of the
Saxon King Alfred over the invading Danes in 879 [CE]
and praises him for the establishment of the monarchy,
the navy, trial by jury, liberty, and other things.
Camelot is sometimes imagined to be the citadel of the
much earlier and legendary King Arthur, who is supposed
to have led the Britons against the Saxons. Stonehenge
is the famous prehistoric monument on Salisbury Plain.
It is something of a hyperbole to extend the sound of
the guns to these ancient sacred places---Stonehenge
is some fifty miles away...."
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