This thread is going faster than I can keep up with it.
Rhina, I agree with you about the pronunciation of that line. However, some people on the board feel uncomfortable with three unstressed syllables in a row, so I throw in what I call a "theoretical" stress when I'm scanning such lines.
Robert, this line:
He burned his house down for the fire insurance
is like the other line -- it takes a somewhat artifical pronunciation to promote "for" over "down". I find myself inserting a pause after "down", where a missing stressed syllable would go, as if the line were pronounced:
he BURNED / his HOUSE / down [pause] / for the FIRE / in SUR / ance
Pauses sometimes take the place of syllables, and that immeasurably complicates scansion and meter altogether. Some poets, I think, expect too much of their readers when they think the reader should be educated enough to promote a syllable which ordinarily would take no stress. It would be wonderful if all readers were so educated, but they aren't.
P.S. I just went back and re-read those posts, and I find this line the most troubling of all:
For hours the convoys had rolled by
There is no way I can give any stress to "had", which is a verbal "business word" that modifies "rolled" and has no meaning of its own. If this is iambic tetrameter, it isn't very carefully written. Since "by" must take a stress at the end of the line, this is yet another line with three unstressed syllables in a row.
[This message has been edited by Caleb Murdock (edited September 14, 2001).]
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