Off topic: New Year's frivolity

[Patricia M Godfrey pmgodfrey@xxxxxxxx]

Someone suggested a little diversion was needed here, so perhaps one of
our erudite members can spot the anomaly in the following: there is
something "different," besides the rather quaint word usage and order. I
have a wager with myself that more people will more quickly spot it here
than will when I submit it to the EFA's newsletter.

The measure of our English speech is such that anyone with very little
care can write blank verse. Not very good, I grant, nor much to be
esteemed, but still blank verse. The five-foot line, the iamb's constant
beat, flow trippingly from off our tongues, our pens. And quite without
our will or our intent, we find within a passage meant as prose a line,
some feet, or half a dozen more of this the meter native of our tongue.

A further question is what the name of that kind of thing is. I'm sure
there is one, but have ransacked my manuals of rhetoric to no avail.

Patricia M. Godfrey
PMGodfrey@xxxxxxxx