Certainly from Beowulf on down, the four stress has been the main accentual line. But accentual pentameter can be written. Here is a perfectly competent example by new member Henry Quince which we discusseed not long ago over at Deep End:
Adjustable Wench
A flibbertigibbet of little account, I thought her;
She’d do for a time, though young for this old grizzled beard.
It little deterred me that people might think her my daughter —
just so long as she gave me my oats, though I boozed and I leered.
A dancer she was, so she told me; I asked her no more,
and assumed from her coquettish looks that she’d rather not spell
out in detail the dancing she did, or what costume she wore
or discarded at work; but if cynics can fall, then I fell.
It wasn’t her bedcraft alone, though that was a marvel.
(I’d call it an effing one, aiming at literal fact,
but that would fall short: for this was sublimely ineffable,
the ultimate premier cru of the physical act.)
But that magic of hers! While I happily left it as mystery,
Her body’s quicksilver enacted an ageing man’s dream
And I shared little else of myself or my life; in our history,
As short as it was, that never was part of my scheme.
It was always at my place we met, a long afternoon;
and we never discussed why this was the pattern, not that.
But one day, one morning, I answered a whim, none too soon,
and strolled to the street where she lived, and called at her flat.
She came to the door in a robe, and missed not a beat.
She welcomed me in, to strains of Saint-Saëns, and I took
it all in with a glance, and turned on my heel in some heat —
The man in her bed, and the wine, and the poetry book.
So I left in a furious temper, slamming the door.
The old story, yes; but what cut my heart to the core
Was the man — some years older than I, a wreck on the shore
Of old age — and her red and black ballet shoes ranged on the floor.
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