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yric verse it is used more frequently than any other. From MALHERBE to VICTOR HUGO the accepted rule demanded a caesura after the sixth syllable and a pause at the end of the line; this divided the line into two equal portions and separated each line from its neighbors, preventing the overflow (enjambement) of one line into the next. The line thus constructed had two fixed stresses, one on the sixth syllable, before the caesura, which therefore had to be the final syllable of a word and could not have mute _e_ for its vowel, and another on the final (twelfth) syllable. There are indeed in the poets of that period examples of lines in which, when naturally read, the most considerable pause falls in some other position; but the line always offers in the sixth place a syllable capable of a principal stress. There was also regularly one other stressed syllable in each half-line; it might be any one of the first five syllables, but is most frequently the third, second, or fourth, rarely the first or fifth; but the secondary stress might be wanting altogether; a third stressed syllable in the half-line sometimes occurs. The Romanticists introduced a somewhat greater flexibility into the Alexandrine line by permitting the displacement or suppression of the caesura and the overflow of one line into the next; the displacement of the caesura sometimes goes so far as to put in the sixth place in the line a syllable quite incapable of receiving a stress.
In the following stanza of Lamartine (see p. 60), which consists of Alexandrine lines of the classical type, the stressed syllables are indicated by italics and the caesura by a dash:
Salu_t, bois couronnés--d'un r_e_ste de verd_ure!
Feuilla_ges jauniss_a_nts--sur les gaz_ons ép_a_is!
Salu_t, derniers beaux j_ou_rs!--Le d_eu_il de la nat_ure Convient à la douleu_r--et plaî_t à mes reg_a_rds.
Cf. for examples of displaced caesura, Hugo's lines--