Shakespeare and his contemporaries generally distinguished between these two pronunciations using spelling (although they didn't use accents and often didn't use apostrophes). When Shakespeare wrote, in Early Modern English, the extra syllable was in the process of disappearing, and most regular verbs had two pronunciations in widespread use. How did this convention develop? In late Middle English, most verbs formed past tenses by adding an extra syllable. Leapèd, shoutèd, and echoèd in Blake's poem. Today, since people don't understand this convention, editors insert an accented 'è' in past tenses when the poet wanted you to pronounce an extra syllable, like If the poet didn't want an extra syllable, they would replace the 'e' with an apostrophe, as in cover'd, leap'd, and laugh'd. When Blake wrote, the convention in poetry was to pronounce all past tenses spelled with 'ed' with an extra syllable, even though these endings weren't pronounced in normal speech. Otherwise, we either add the consonant /t/ or /d/, as in laughed, grinned or echoed. If the verb ends with a /t/ or /d/, we add an extra syllable, as in printed. Today, in English, there are two ways of forming past tenses of regular verbs. He did not put the accent on leaped and shouted. This is not the spelling Blake used when he originally wrote this poem. ![]() The 'èd' verb ending in 19th-century and earlier poems indicates that you are supposed to pronounce the ending -ed as a separate syllable.
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