The Music of Hindostan c13.s1.7

c13.s1.7

there is hardly a syllable that we can call longer than the others, unless perhaps ‘ground’. But there are several places where we pause between the words, making up a kind of imaginary musical time. We lengthen out the last syllable of ‘sodden’ because of the next word. If that word had been ‘earth’, ‘sodden’ would have gone quicker. As it is, a little more emphasis is laid on ‘sódden ground’ than would be the case in ‘sodden earth’; and the same thing happens with ‘nerveless, listless’, where the difficulty of pronouncing one word after the other makes us pause a little at the termination and so throw a slightly greater emphasis on the root of the word.