(32) Bede condemns hiatus in all its forms, with or without correption of the preceding final syllable, and writes the feature off as a pagan technique, dwelling on it at length in his chapter on the differences between ancient and modern poets.
(34) Bede's other minor innovations include the suggestion that a long vowel may be voluntarily shortened before another vowel inside a word; this is an extension of his discussion of correption before a hiatus, presented as an explanation for such prosodic doublets as Maria/Maria and Eous/Eous.
Discussing the correption of diphthongs, he cites Bede's classical specimens but adds yet another example where a diphthong is shortened word-internally, insisting that this, too, is a pagan feature:
On the other hand, he does discuss the correption of prae in his chapter on the fusion and resolution of syllables and states firmly that praeeunte in Vergil's nec tota tamen ille prior praeeunte carina (Aen.
(61) Hrabanus, in other words, ends in the untenable position of defending the word-internal correption of long vowels while condemning the same practice when applied to diphthongs.
The only poetic practices that he acknowledges as antiquated are common syllables where short vowels are followed by plosives and nasals (remarkably, this is his own observation, informed by his reading of Priscian and possibly his own more extensive knowledge of classical verse) and the use of hiatus, with or without correption, of a diphthong or a long vowel.
Even though you are approaching Sappho in translation, that is no reason you should miss the drama of trying to read a papyrus torn in half or riddled with holes or smaller than a postage stamp." Notes provide clues toward interpretation ("Sappho's poem threatens the woman with an obliteration which it then enacts by not naming her") and explain "
correption" and the force of the particle "de." But Carson never pretends that implacable puzzles can be complacently solved; she provides matter for interpretations that may counter her own.