"Metrically" Quotes from Famous Books
... it is 270, but the Homily says 248. The manuscript reads: "two and a hundred by number, also forty," but l. 1036 is evidently deficient. Wuelker emends to /swylce seofontig/. This is unsatisfactory, since the line is metrically deficient, and since, moreover, the regular word for seventy is not /seofontig/, but /hundseofontig/. Without venturing an emendation, I have taken the number 248 from the Homily, as being nearer the manuscript than the 270 of the Greek. This similarity is an additional argument ... — Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew • Unknown
... temperament, they are surely not so successful as his other work. They are not clearly articulate. Instead of the perfect expression of perfect thoughts—a gift enjoyed only by Shakespeare—they reveal the extreme difficulty of metrically voicing his "trouble." It is in a way like the music of the Liebestod. He is struggling to say what is in his mind, he approaches it, falls away comes near again, only to ... — The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps |