The poet in a golden clime was born,

With golden stars | above,

Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,

The love of love.

Tennyson.

In the last example, from Tennyson's The Poet, the second verse is Iambic trimeter, the fourth dimeter.

This measure is greatly used by our poets in the composition of ballads and hymns; when it is attended with Iambic tetrameter it constitutes our Ballad metre and the Common metre of hymns.

Have mercy, Lord, on me,
As thou wert ever kind;
Let me opprest with loads of guilt

Thy wonted mercy find.

D

Shakspere seems to have used this measure mostly for rapid dialogue and retort, as in the Ghost-scene in Hamlet :

Ghost. To what I shall unfold.

Hamlet.

Speak, I am bound to hear.

(d). IAMBIC TETRAMETER.

Normal line, Eight Syllables

1--1

This octosyllabic measure, which is of dangerously easy construction, and very apt to degenerate into sing-song, has been largely used by our poets of later times. In it are composed Butler's Hudibras, Scott's Marmion, &c., Burns's Tam O'Shanter, Tennyson's In Memoriam, and numerous poems by Shelley, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, &c.

O lady, twine | no wreath | for me,
Or twine it of the cypress tree.

By fairy hands their knell is rung,
By forms unseen their dirge is sung;

Scott.

* Abbott's "Shaksperian Grammar," p. 405.

There Honour comes, a pilgrim grey,
To bless the turf that wraps their clay ;
And Freedom shall a while repair,
And dwell, a weeping hermit there.

Collins.

Some have been beaten till they know
What wood a cudgel's of by th' blow,
Some kicked until they can feel wheth | er
A shoe be Spanish or neat's leath | er.
Butler.

So find I every pleasant spot

In which we two were wont to meet,
The field, the chamber, and the street,

For all is dark where thou art not.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring happy bells across the snow;
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Tennyson.

"In Memoriam."

Of the Ballad metre, the following examples will suffice:

They followed from the snowy bank

Those footmarks one by one,

Into the middle of the plank-
And further there was none.

Wordsworth.

I am the Rider of the wind,
The Stirrer of the storm;
The hurricane I left behind
Is yet with lightning warm.

Byron.

This when rhymed is known as the Heroic Measure of English poetry. It was much used by Chaucer, Dryden, Pope, Goldsmith, Keats, and Southey, and is perhaps the most frequently used of any English metre. Pope rendered it somewhat monotonous by over-refinement, and by making his pauses occur too frequently in the middle of the verse and his sentences terminate at the end of the line. It is, however, a noble metre, and its rhythm is capable of infinite variation.

Great wits are sure | to mad | ness near | allied,
And thin | parti | tions do | their bounds | divide.
Dryden.

All nature is but art unknown to thee;
All chance, direction which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good.

Pope.

How commentators each dark passage shun,
And hold their farthing candle to the sun.

Young.

And as a child, when scaring sounds molest,
Clings close and closer to his mother's breast,
So the loud torrent and the whirlwind's roar
But bind him to his native mountains more.

Goldsmith.

Four heroics rhyming alternately form the

Elegiac stanza, e.g.:

Full many a gem of purest ray serene

The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear;
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,

And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Gray.

Iambic pentameter unrhymed is the famous Blank verse of literature (see page 184).

(f) IAMBIC HEXAMETER. Normal line, Twelve Syllables

- | ~ - | ~ -|

This measure has been seldom used by our poets since Drayton composed his Polyolbion in it in 1610. From an old French poem written in this measure detailing the deeds of Alexander the Great, verses of this dimension are known as Alexandrines, and are seldom used except with pentameters to vary the monotony of their rhythm. A notable instance of this is in the use of an Alexandrine to form the ninth line of the Spenserian stanza.

A needless Alexandrine ends the song,

Which like a wound | ed snake | drags its | slow length | along.

Pope.

An hundred valiant men had this brave Robin Hood,
Still ready at his call, that bowmen were right good,
All clad in Lincoln green, with caps of red and blue,
His fellow's winded horn, not one of them but knew.

Drayton.

When spring unlocks the flowers to paint the laughing soil, When summer's balmy showers refresh the mower's toil.

Heber.