periodic interpunction

[Lavrentivs]

Does anyone know good examples of the periodic interpunction mentioned by Fowler in the King’s English? (Where the colon has merely quantitative value, and there is generally only a quantitative difference between , ; : .)

[Craig_Thomas]

It must be some few centuries since we regularly used the colon that way in English, though I seem to remember Joyce often doing so in Ulysses. A quick flick through didn't reveal much, but there's this sort of thing in the 'Lotus-Eaters' chapter:

Trams: a car of Preston's dyeworks: a widow in her weeds.

He saw his trunk and limbs riprippled over and sustained, buoyed lightly upward, lemonyellow: his navel, bud of flesh: and saw the dark, tangled curls of his bush floating, floating hair of the stream around the limp father of thousands, a languid, floating flower.

And this, later, in 'Ithaca':

Starting united both at normal walking pace from Beresford place they followed in the order named Lower and Middle Gardiner streets and Mountjoy square, west: then, at reduced pace, each bearing left, Gardiner's place by an inadvertence as far as the farther corner of Temple street: then, at reduced pace with interruptions of halt, bearing right, Temple street, north, as far as Hardwicke place.

Here's Wordsworth, from 'Composed upon Westminster Bridge', September 3, 1802:

The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

And here's a nice bit of Spenser's The Faerie Queene, III.ix.42, appropriate for a classics forum:

At last in Latium he did arrive,
Where he with cruell warre was entertaind
Of th'inland folke, which sought him backe to drive,
Till he with old Latinus was constraind,
To contract wedlock: (so the fates ordaind.)
Wedlock contract in bloud, and eke in blood
Accomplishéd, that many deare complaind:
The rivall slaine, the victour through the flood
Escapéd hardly, hardly praisd his wedlock good.

Of course, these may be too far from standard English to be the good examples you asked for.

[Lavrentivs]

Great examples: thanks!