Hi, Eric.
If you're having trouble scanning this poem--which is actually more metrically regular than most of Shakespeare's sonnets--bear in mind the following rules:
1. In order to take a metrical beat, a syllable does not have to be one that would ordinarily take an especially strong speech stress--it can still count as a beat if it isn't contiguous with a more strongly-stressed syllable. Thus, as Alicia notes, a preoposition like "WITH" in line 1 (and 14) can take a metrical beat because it's sandwiched between the weaker syllables "-ted" and "the." Same goes for "...WATCHman ON his BEAT" and "unWILling TO exPLAIN" and "HOUses FROM aNOther." In each of these cases the preposition sounds just strongly enough to constitute one of the line's five beats.
2. Likewise, in polysyllabic words there will frequently be syllables other than the main stressed syllable that easily take a certain amount of extra stress. If you look up the pronunciation guide for a word like this in a dictionary, it will typically use a forward-slanting accent mark (/) for the primary stress and backward-slanting accents for any secondary stresses (\). Those secondarily-stressed syllables can take the metrical beat or not, depending on context. In "Acquainted," a word like "interrupted" can count for two metrical beats--one for its primary speech stress ("-RUP-"), and one for the secondary stress on "IN-." "LUmiNAry" works pretty much the same way, except there the primary speech stress is on the first syllable and the secondary stress is on the third syllable.
3. While verbs are usually more likely to take a metrical beat than prepositions, this is not the case when the verb and preposition are paired together tightly to make a verb phrase. To give a fairly bad example: one LOOKS up the chimney for Santa Claus (here the proposition is more connected to "the chimney" than to the verb "looks," so it isn't a verb phrase), but one looks UP the spelling of a difficult word (here the "up" is obviously more closely linked to the verb "looks" than to the noun, so it constitutes a verb phrase. An egg may BREAK in its carton, but a hiker breaks IN a new pair of boots. Frost's speaker has "walked OUT" in rain, rather than WALKED "out in RAIN."
4. It has always been acceptable for a line of iambic pentameter to begin with a trochee instead of an iamb. All of the lines beginning "I have" should probably be read as starting with a trochee.
This is probably more than you wanted to know. Sorry.
yours,
Peter
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