Leaving aside the archaic sentence construction, dictated by rhyme and metre, there is no way of scanning the second line in a satisfactory manner.
As I was watching "Inside Job," Charles Ferguson's meticulous and infuriating documentary about the causes and consequences of the financial crisis of 2008, an odd, archaic sentence kept popping into my head.
While a few scenes, such as the discussion over accomplished women, aligned closely with the author's original dialogue, many others "substituted instead a mixture of modern idiom and archaic-sounding sentence structure".
When readers see the name "Sir Walter Scott" on a spine, it's almost as if a miasma of preconceptions and prejudices – aristocratic privilege, dull pomposity, archaic conservatism, royal sycophancy, meandering sentences – comes swirling up like so many dust motes blown off a book right at the back of an antiquarian bookseller's.
As for grammar, there are many "rules" (but how can they be rules if no one regulates them?) that, when followed, simply make sentences and phrases sound archaic today.
She was arrested for violating Pakistan's archaic and overtly discriminatory blasphemy laws and sentenced to death in a trial in which Christian witnesses were not allowed to testify by a judge who refused to consider any possibility that Asia had not blasphemed.
In Modern Standard Chinese the subordinating particle de combines the functions of several Late Archaic Chinese particles, and the verb particle le and the homophonous sentence particle le have taken over for other Late Archaic forms.
These sentences have an austere rhythm of their own, and the archaic diction seems more acceptable without the alarm bell of forced rhyme.
** These sentences have an austere rhythm of their own, and the archaic diction seems more acceptable without the alarm bell of forced rhyme.
The Canadian author Nancy Huston has won this year's Bad Sex in Fiction award for her novel "Infrared," which captured the judges' attention with sentences like, "Kamal and I are totally immersed in flesh, that archaic kingdom that brings forth tears and terrors, nightmares, babies and bedazzlements".
By Rachel Arons December 4, 2012 The Canadian author Nancy Huston has won this year's Bad Sex in Fiction award for her novel "Infrared," which captured the judges' attention with sentences like, "Kamal and I are totally immersed in flesh, that archaic kingdom that brings forth tears and terrors, nightmares, babies and bedazzlements".
