Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Third Series

Fragment ID: 21025

I certainly think feet longer than the three syllable maximum can be brought in and ought to be. I do not see for instance why a foot like this |||||||||||||||||should not be as legitimate as the anapaest. Only, of course, if frequently used, they would mean the institution of another principle of harmony not provided for by the essentially melodic basis of English prosody in the past; as

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I agree that this freedom would be more pressingly needed in longer metres than in short ones, bat they need not be excluded from the short ones either.