A last quick reply. Your scansion's mostly right. But surely
"dust" must be accented, no? That's one of those abrupt trochees in the second foot (and not after a caesura). There is an ionic in the third line (and a fair number of other ionics throughout the poem) but not in the second line. Here's my scansion, in my notation, which I assume everyone understands by now. (The second line's the one with seven
strongly stressed syllables!)
o S o S o S o s o S
o S S o O S O S o S
S O o S o o S S o S (o)
Is that clear? And I'd have to disagree that there's anything loose about this poem--it is in strict iambics from beginning to end, except for that one short line, the four- beater. Not one extra syllable that's not accounted for by elision. You couldn't write stricter blank verse; more regular, maybe, but not stricter. One lovely thing worth pointing out: notice the feminine ending in "To please the boy by giving him the half hour" --it's even stronger than the accented "half"! As far as I know, that's one of Frost's several brilliant additions to iambic prosody. I can't think of earlier examples; if any of you know of one, please tell me. Another example of that kind of feminine ending in Frost: "Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day." Another great innovation of Frost's does appear in
earlier poetry but only very rarely: the substitution of two anapests for three iambs. The last 25 or 30 lines of "A Servant to Servants" is full of such lines. For example,
two lines in a row: "And I looked to be happy, and I was, /
As I said, for a while--but I don't know!" You could scan
them iambically, I suppose, but what for? they are really anapests. Another example, where the last six syllables can't be anything but two anapests: "Other folks have to, and why shouldn't I?" There are probably a few other such lines in the tradition, but very few; the only one I can think of, offhand, is one of Milton's, from "Paradise Lost"--"Burned after them to the bottomless pit." But Frost made it a permissible substitution! Don't try it at home unless you know what you're doing. (You know that Frost is doing something really good and original when he does it twice in a row, as in the two lines above--he wants you to know that HE knows exactly what he's done. A show-off, yes, but when you're that good, you get a a free pass.) There are a couple of other marvelous innovations in his stuff, but enough.
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