2.-TROCHAIC MEASURE.

The rhythm of Trochaic verse has a distinctive flow from that of Iambic; it is more sprightly and lively, and therefore suited for the dress of cheerful themes and the description of quick-moving action. Milton's L'Allegro-the cheerful man-is written for the most part in this measure, while the sombre Il Penseroso is mostly Iambic. It is often called the Tripping measure.

(a). TROCHAIC MONOMETER. Normal line, Two Syllables

This one-foot verse is only met with mixed with longer verses, e.g:

Hope is banished,

Joys are vanished,

Damon, my beloved. is gone!

Dryden.

It is difficult, if not almost impossible, to find suitable specimens of exact verses in all the trochaic measures, because our poets avail themselves so freely of licences. It has been already pointed out that extra unaccented syllables are frequently used at the end of a verse, making it hypermetrical; it is now necessary to add farther that an additional unaccented syllable is allowed before the first foot of a trochaic line, to which the term anacrusis has been applied, e.g.:

The Queen was in the garden.

Besides this, truncated lines, as they are called, are frequently met with, i.e. verses shorn of their last unaccented syllables, e.g.:

Gray's Liliputian ode is almost entirely in this diminutive metre.

In a maze,
Lost, I gaze.

Can our eyes
Reach thy size?

May my lays
Swell with praise
Worthy thee,

Worthy me!

(c). TROCHAIC TRIMETER.

Normal line, Six Syllables - ~|- -|- ~.

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Nearly all verses in this measure are truncated in the last foot. In the annexed passage from The Passionate Pilgrim, only the 2nd, 3rd, and 6th verses are perfectly symmetrical.

Crabbed age and | youth
Cannot live to | gether;
Youth is full of pleasance,
Age is full of care;

Youth like summer morn,
Age like winter | weather;
summer | brave,

Age like winter | bare;

Youth like

Youth is full of | sport,

Age's breath is short.

Shakspere.

Tennyson's Maud furnishes an example of twentyeight consecutive lines of the same measure:

Go not, happy day,

From the shining fields;

Go not, happy day,

Till the maiden yields.

Rosy is the west,

Rosy is the south,

Rosy are her cheeks,

And a rose her mouth.

Tennyson.

A beautiful combination of verses of this kind

but slightly varying is seen in Shelley's Prometheus.

Normal line, Eight Syllables - ~|-~|- ~

This measure is sufficiently lengthy for continuous composition, and seems to be a favourite with all our modern poets. Longfellow's Hiawatha, a poem of upwards of five thousand lines, is composed in it in unrhymed verse. Tennyson and Shelley also furnish numerous examples, chiefly with symmetrical and truncated verses intermingled.

Why so pale ănd | wan, fond | lover,
Prythee, why so | pale ?

Will, if | looking | well can't ¦ move her,
Looking ill prevail?

Prythee, | why so | pale ?

Suckling.

Thus it is our | daughters | leave us,
Those we love and | those who | love us!
Just when they have | learned to | help us,
When we ǎre | old and | lean up on them,
Comes a youth with flaunting feathers,
With a flute of reeds, a stranger
Wanders piping through the village.
Beckons to the fairest maiden,
And she follows where he leads her,
Leaving all things for the stranger!

Though in distant lands we sigh,
Parched beneath a hostile sky;
Though the deep between us rolls,
Friendship shall unite our souls;
Still in fancy's rich domain
Oft shall we three meet again.

Wha will be a traitor knave?

Wha will fill a coward's grave?

Wha sae base as be a slave?

Traitor! coward! turn and flee!

Longfellow.

Burns.

The following quatrains exhibit the four-foot line in both its complete and truncated forms; this is the 8,7 measure of our hymns.

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.

Longfellow.