Do these contain 4 accented syllables?
When the north wind blows its icy air to cool the earth,
A creature secluded in the mountains of North America awakens
Refreshed by his summer slumber.
Many, many moons before, villagers named the beast Thor,
After the Norse god of thunder and were always listening for his wakening roar--
A bone-chilling half-growl, half-shriek, ricocheting off the mountains and echoing in the valleys.
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Let us know what you think about each of the lines you've written.
To determine whether these lines contain four accented syllables, we need to analyze the stressed or accented syllables in each line.
Let's examine the first line:
"When the north wind blows its icy air to cool the earth."
To identify the stressed or accented syllables, we can emphasize the syllables as we read the line aloud, noting which ones stand out more. Doing so, we find that the stressed syllables are as follows:
"When the NORTH wind BLOWS its ICY AIR to COOL the EARTH."
In this line, there are six stressed syllables, so it does not contain four accented syllables.
Now let's analyze the second line:
"A creature secluded in the mountains of North America awakens."
Reading the line and emphasizing the stressed syllables, we get:
"A CREAture seCLUDed in the MOUNtains of NORTH AmeRIca aWAKens."
This line also contains six stressed syllables, so it does not contain four accented syllables.
Finally, let's examine the third line:
"Refreshed by his summer slumber."
Reading it aloud with the emphasized stressed syllables:
"ReFRESHED by his SUMmer SLOMber."
This line has four stressed syllables, so it does contain four accented syllables.
To summarize, out of the three lines provided, only the line "Refreshed by his summer slumber" contains four accented syllables.