'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.' From memory I had this sentence down as 'In a hole in the ground lived a hobbit' -- a version which seems to me (not to get too pedantic) as better in several ways: not just briefer but with more of a feel for the rhythmic flow of the line. It breaks into three anapests, with an unstressed final syllable. That supernumerary 'there' clogs the prosody. Ah well.
Ah, but if you write it as poetry, you'll see the difference. You like it like this:
ReplyDeleteIn a hole,
In the ground
Lived a hobbit.
But, surely, we'd like our hobbit to have a line to himself, like this:
In a hole,
In the ground
There lived
A hobbit.
Maybe; though I'm still wrongfooted by that 'there lived' line 3 of your second poem. Hmm ...
ReplyDeleteNo, follow the stresses. It's Tolkien's old favorite, iambic tetrameter:
ReplyDelete'n a hole'n
the ground
there lived
a hob[bit].
(As much iambic tetrameter as a lot of Shakespeare is penta-, anyway.)
(Yes, I'm reading month-old Europrogocontestovision entries. It's that kind of Friday afternoon.)
(It keeps going, too:
ReplyDeletenot a nas/ty, dir/ty, wet/ hole, filled
with the ends /of worms /and an ooz/y smell,
nor yet a dry, /[] bare, /[] san/dy hole
with noth/ing in't /to sit down /on or to eat...)