A beautiful combination of verses of this kind but slightly varying is seen in Shelley's Prometheus.

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 ǎnd | wan, fond | lověr,
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.

Composition in this measure is very rare, and even when combined with truncated and hypermetrical verses it has been but little cultivated.

Spake full well in language | quaint ănd | ōlděn,
One who | dwelleth | by the castled | Rhine,
When he called the flowers so | blue and golden
Stars that in earth's | firma | ment do | shine.

Longfellow.

What is yon so white beside the greenwood?
Is it snow or flight of cygnets resting?
Were it snow, ere now it had been melted;
Were it swans, ere now the flock had left us.

Aytoun.

Then methought I heard a hollow sound,
Gathering up from all the lower ground;
Narrowing in to where they sat assembled,
Low voluptuous music, winding, trembled.

Tennyson.

(f). TROCHAIC HEXAMETER.

Normal line, Twelve Syllables

1 - -1 - -1

་

There are but few examples of this measure.

Holy, holy, holy, | all the | saints a dore Thee,
Casting down their golden | crowns a | round the | glassy |

sea.

Heber.

Here is a specimen of this verse truncated.

Love with rosy | fetter | held us | firmly | bound;
Pure un mixed en | joyment | grateful | here we found.
Bosom bosom | meeting 'gainst our youths we | pressed;
Bright the morn a rose then | glad to see us | blessed.
G. Borrow.

(g and h). TROCHAIC HEPTAMETER AND OCTAMETER. Normal lines Fourteen and Sixteen Syllables. There are but few symmetrical poems in these measures, although they have been freely used by Longfellow, Lord Lytton, Aytoun, and Tennyson in irregular combinations. Tennyson's Locksley Hall and Poe's Raven supply good examples.

Cursed be the social wants that sin against the | strength of youth!

Cursed | be the ¦ social | lies that | warp us from the | living truth!

Cursed be the sickly | forms that err from honest | na

ture's rule!

Cursed be the gold that gilds the straitened | foreof the fool!

head

Tennyson.

Ah! distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow-sorrow for the lost Lenore-For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore

Nameless here for evermore.

Poe.

In the market-place of Bruges stands the belfry old and brown: Thrice consumed and thrice rebuilded, still it watches o'er the

town.

As the summer morn was breaking on that lofty tower I stood, And the world threw off the darkness like the weeds of widowhood.

Longfellow.

Then we bounded from our covert. Judge how looked the

Saxons then,

When they saw the rugged mountain start to life with armed Aytoun.

men.

Come, my lad, and sit beside me; we have often talked before Of the hurricane and tempest, and the storms on sea and

shore :

When we read of deed and daring done for dear old England's

sake,

We have cited Nelson's duty and the enterprise of Drake. Clement Scott.

3.-ANAPESTIC MEASURE.

Trisyllabic measures have not been much used by our poets for reasons that are not far to seek. They require the constant recurrence of two syllables both unaccented and short to one syllable accented, and our language does not afford that proportion. Their construction being thus rendered