(All examples in this appendix are drawn from nineteenth-century verse and, whenever possible, from the poems analysed in the body of the book).

The regular alexandrine

The stanzas of Lamartine's ‘Le Lac’ are each composed of three alexandrines followed by a hexasyllable, i.e. 12, 12, 12, 6. The scansion of the first stanza immediately makes several things clear about the regular alexandrine:

1 It has a fixed medial caesura (marked //) after the sixth syllable, which enforces an accent (stress) on the sixth syllable. The only other obligatory accent in the line falls on the final (twelfth) syllable.

2 The caesura is a metrical juncture which usually coincides with a significant syntactical juncture (and thus a pause), for reasons which will become apparent. But it is first and foremost the line's principal point of rhythmic articulation, not its most obtrusive syntactic break. It divides the alexandrine into two half-lines (hémistiches). Each half-line usually contains one other accent apart from the one on its final syllable. This ‘secondary’ accent is mobile and may fall on any of the hemistich's other syllables.