Among the greatest of every nation, whether ancient or modern, poets stand almost preeminent. In the Old Testament history there is no one greater than “the sweet Psalmist of Israel." Homer stands in almost solitary grandeur in the early annals of Greece. In the history of Italy, what name is to be placed above that of Dante? In England there are, perhaps, no names to be ranked above those of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Tennyson, whose imperishable works abide with us, and in no small degree mould the thought and feeling of each succeeding generation. And among the illustrious citizens of our own country there are few or none who have reached a higher nobility of character than its great singers, Longfellow, Bryant, Whittier, Hayne, and Lowell. Their lives were no less sane than beautiful.

48. The Poet as Seer. The poet is preeminently a seer. He discerns the divine beauty and truth of life which escape the common sight; and because he reveals them to us in his melodious art he becomes an exalted teacher. In the midst of the tumults of greed and gain he lifts up his voice to witness of higher things. In the presence of what seemed to her a sordid generation, Mrs. Browning calls poets

"The only truth-tellers now left to God,
The only speakers of essential truth,
Opposed to relative, comparative,

And temporal truths; the only holders by

His sun-skirts, through conventional gray glooms;
The only teachers who instruct mankind,
From just a shadow on a charnel-wall,
To find man's veritable stature out,
Erect, sublime the measure of a man."

The poet, with his intenser nature, gives expression to our deepest thoughts and feelings. What we have often felt but vaguely, he utters for us in imperishable forms. In how many things Shakespeare has voiced the human soul! While poetry has rippling measures suited to our smiles, it belongs, in its richest form, to the deeper side of our nature. Its loftiest numbers are given to truth and righteousness, to the tragic strivings and sorrows of life, and to the mysteries of deathless love.

49. Versification. Versification is the science of making verse. The unit or starting point in versification is the syllable, which may be long or short, according to the time it requires in pronouncing, and accented or unaccented, according to the stress of tone with which it is pronounced. Quantity, by which is meant the length of syllables, formed the basis of versification in Latin and Greek poetry; but in English poetry it is used to give variety, music, or some other element of effectiveness to the verse. This may be illustrated in a well-known passage from Pope :

"When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,

The line, too, labors, and the words move slow;

Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,

Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the main."

The first two lines occupy more time in reading than the last two, the sound in each case corresponding in some measure to the sense. An examination of the lines will show that the first two have more long vowel sounds than the last two, and that these and other vowel sounds are lengthened in pronunciation by the presence

and" rock's vast weight "are not phrases that slip quickly from the tongue. Furthermore, the second line is lengthened by no fewer than three pauses.

The principle of English verse is accent, and not quantity. In the line,

"The mossy marbles rest,"

it will be observed that every other syllable receives a stress of voice or is accented. The scheme of the verse may be represented as follows:

the line being broken up into three equal and similar parts, each of which is called a foot. The foot consisting of an unaccented followed by an accented syllable is called an iambus.

In the line,

"Home they brought her warrior dead,"

we observe that beginning with the first syllable every other one is accented, giving us the following as the scheme of the verse:

The last foot is obviously incomplete or catalectic. The foot that consists of two syllables, the first of which is accented, is called a trochee. It is the opposite of the iambus.

Again, in the line,

"This is the forest primeval; the murmuring pines and the hemlocks,"

it will be noticed that, beginning with the first, each accented syllable is followed by two unaccented syllables, except in the last foot, which is a trochee. The scheme of the verse is as follows:

LUULUULUULUULUULU.

This foot, consisting of one accented syllable, followed by two unaccented syllables, is called a dactyl, Once more, in the line,

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Through the depths of Loch Katrine the steed shall career," the third syllable is accented, and the scheme of the verse may be thus indicated:

This foot, which is the opposite of the dactyl, is known as the anapest.

A spondee is a foot of two equally accented syllables; as, mainspring, sea-maid. There is still another foot, known as the amphibrach, which consists of three syllables, the second of which is accented, as in the word de-ni-al. The scheme of the following line,

"The flesh was a picture for painters to study,"

may be indicated thus :

But nearly all English poetry is based upon the four feet, iambus, trochee, dactyl, and anapest, first given.

50. Meters.

A verse is named from the number of

prevailing feet. A verse containing one iambic foot is called iambic monometer; two feet, iambic dimeter;

three feet, iambic trimeter; four feet, iambic tetrameter; five feet, iambic pentameter; six feet, iambic hexameter. The line,

"The twilight hours like birds flew by,”

is made up of four iambic feet, and is therefore an iambic tetrameter. Iambic pentameter, in which Milton's "Paradise Lost," much of Pope's poetry, Shakespeare's dramas, and, indeed, a large proportion of English verse, are written, is called heroic measure.

In like manner we have trochaic monometer, dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, and hexameter. The following line,

"As unto the bow the cord is,"

is trochaic tetrameter, which is the meter of "Hiawatha." The foregoing are called dissyllabic meters; but the trisyllabic measures have the same names according to the number of feet. A verse consisting of a single dactyl is thus dactylic monometer; of two dactyls, dactylic dimeter; and so on up to dactylic hexameter, which is the meter of Homer's "Iliad," Vergil's "Eneid," and Longfellow's "Evangeline Evangeline" and "Courtship of Miles

Standish." The line,

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Softly the breezes descend in the valley,"

is dactylic tetrameter, though the last foot is a trochee. In like manner we have anapestic lines of all lengths from monometer to hexameter. The line,

"How she smiled, and I could not but love,"

contains three anapests, and is therefore anapestic trimeter.