Bob, a few thoughts in response to the examples you used. In the first example, the second foot is clearly a trochee, but since it doesn't come at the end of the line it doesn't address the question about final trochees.
His work/ finished,/ he slipped/ away/ unseen/
In the second example, I would have called the second foot monosyllabic and the third foot an anapest, rather than reading the second foot as either a trochee or an inverted iamb:
The new/ day ^,/ and the shape/ of his/ own hand/
It seems to me that the caesura which is forced by both the sense and the punctuation breaks the foot between day and and. Can you have a foot with a forced caesura right in the middle? Well, perhaps you can, but would you?
I read the third example as you do, iambic with promotion on a.
To fleet/ing forms,/ a bon/fire, a/ tornado/
But the fourth example I read entirely differently, with the second and fifth feet as anapests and the rest as iambs, thus:
And of/fer to put/ me gent/ly out/ of my pain/
I know, I know, you're going to say that I have to stress me, and vocally I do, but the beat seems to be steady under the fancy footwork.
Caleb, it's sort of like dancing or playing hopscotch. The words you stress verbally may skip over the metrical beat and land on either side. Sometimes you actually lower your voice in order to stress a word. There doesn't have to be a vocal promotion of a word just because it holds metrical prominence. All that is necessary is that you be able to read the line to a rhythm of off-beat-on-beat. I'm trying to find three vocally unstressed syllables in the line you mention and I can only find two vocally unstressed words in the whole line:
For HOURS the CONVOYS HAD ROLLED BY
In a linguistics class you might diagram it something like this, with the voice beginning lower on the preposition and dropping on the article, then raised and held steady on convoys had rolled and then decending onto by, yet by is stressed as much or more than any other word in the line:
___/---\___/ --- --- --- ---\___
Metrically, it sounds like iambic pentameter to me.
For hours/ the con/ voys had/ rolled by/
Let me give you a line of regular iambic tetrameter here and invite you to stess each word in it in turn. Regardless of which word you emphasize, the line itself will still have four feet.
How long/ have you/ been drink/ing gin?/ 4 iambs
HOW long have you been drinking gin? 1 trochee, 3 iambs
How LONG have you been drinking gin? 4 iambs
How long HAVE you been drinking gin? iamb, trochee, iamb, iamb or 2 trochees, 2 iambs
How long have YOU been drinking gin? 4 iambs
How long have you BEEN drinking gin? iamb, iamb, trochee, iamb
How long have you been DRINKing gin? 4 iambs
How long have you been drinking GIN? 4 iambs
The metrical count of a line doesn't change simply because the reader performs it with more or less vocal stress on given words. But if a count is dropped, the metrical value changes.
The above line is all two-syllable feet. But with an added phrase the meter could be either 4 or 5 feet, and the reader, whether sophisticated or not, must depend on the metrical climate to tell him how to read it.
How long/ did you say/ you've been drink/ing gin?/ 4
How long/ did you/ say you've/ been drink/ ing gin?/ 5
Carol
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