Silence accompanied; | for beast and bird,

They to their grassy couch, these to their

nests

Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale:
She all night long | her amorous descant sung;
Silence was pleased: | now glowed the firmament
With living sapphires; Hesperus that led
†The starry host, rode brightest, till the moon,
Rising in clouded majesty, at length

Apparent queen | unveiled her peerless light,
And o'er the dark | her silver mantle threw.”

The cæsural pause in anapastic verse, falls appropriately near the middle of the line. But harmony and variety require not unfrequently a deviation from this rule.

"Tis night; and the landscape is lovely no more:

I mourn; but, ye woodlands, I mourn not for you; For morn is approaching, your charms to restore, Perfum'd with fresh fragrance | and glittering with dew."

"My banks they are furnished with bees, Whose murmur | invites me to sleep;

My grottoes are shaded with trees,

And my hills are white over with sheep."

Note 1. The casural pause is to be observed only when it coincides with the rhetorical pause; and the latter may sometimes produce a double pause or demicasura; thus,

"The look that spoke gladness and welcome was gone,

The blaze that shone bright in the hall was no more;

A stranger was there, with a bosom of stone:

And cold was his look, as I enter'd the door."

2d. This pause is comparatively slight, and is sometimes entirely omitted in the shorter forms of

verse.

*This pause is sometimes termed demi-casural, as it has but half the length of that which occurs at the cæsura.

† See note on preceding page.

"Remote from cities | liv'd a swain
Unvex'd with all the cares of gain;
His head was silver'd o'er with age,
And long experience | made him sage."
"Or, if it be thy will and pleasure,
Direct my plough to find a treasure!"

Metre.

Metre is the measure, or 'time' of rhythm, arising from the arrangement of successive sounds, in 'numbers' or groups, corresponding to or contrasted with each other in length or shortness, force or weakness,— denominated metrical feet, and constituting prosodial

'time.'

These correspondences and contrasts in sound, produce to the ear a degree of that effect which belongs, in its full expression, to the 'beat' in music. The value of metre may be made to appear in a very striking light, by reading a passage of poetry, without regard to its rhythm, and in the manner of prose. We may take for example the opening of Paradise Lost, and arrange it to the eye as prose, in the following manner: "Of man's first disobedience; and the fruit of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste brought death into the world, and all our wo, with loss of Eden, till one greater man restore us, and regain the blissful seat, sing, heavenly muse." This passage, if read with a due attention to rhythm, will produce a very different effect to the ear, and become at once invested with a sonorous harmony of utterance.

"Of man's first disobedience; and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our wo,
With loss of Eden, till one greater man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, heavenly muse!"

The groups or portions of sound into which rhythm divides itself, are, in the language of prosody, called feet: of these, the following are the principal that occur in English verse; the iambus, consisting of two

syllables; the first either short, or unaccented, or both, and the second either long, or accented, or both, as "ădōre," "forgot*:"-the trochee, which is exactly the iambus inverted, as "fatăl," "error:"-the pyrrhic, which consists of two short syllables, as the first two words in the phrase "in a recess: -the spondee, which consists of two long syllables, as “lowbrow'd:"-the anapast, consisting of three syllables, the first two short, and the third long, as "complaisant."

The prevalence of any one of these feet, gives rise to the classification of verse as iambic, trochaic, or anapastic; each requiring an appropriate but chaste rhythm in the utterance. The spondee and pyrrhic occur only as occasional feet, thrown in for variety in particular verses; thus,

"She all night long her amorous descant sung;' ""Twas from philosophy man learn'd to tame The soil."

Note. The trochee and the anapast, though they usually form distinct species of verse, are occasionally introduced, like the pyrrhic and the spondee, for variety of rhythm; thus,

"Lō! from the echoing axe and thundering flame Poison and plague, and yelling rage are fled."

Iambic verse has the following among other subdivisions heroic-or the rhyming couplet, (two lines,) of five iambic feet, or ten syllables in each line. This kind of verse occurs in heroic poems,―(the narrative of heroic actions or enterprises;) but it is also used in lofty or grave subjects, generally. A stanza is sometimes formed of four heroic couplets, or eight lines rhyming in successive or alternate pairs, and an Alexandrine verse,- —a line of six iambic feet, or twelve syllables. See examples of this stanza in the 'Suggestions' for practice on this lesson,-under the heads of moderate' and 'lively' utterance.

Blank verse differs from heroic metre in consisting

These marks are used to distinguish long and short syllables, and they are transferred arbitrarily to those which are unaccented or accented.

of single lines, and being entirely destitute of rhymehence its epithet of blank.' This species of verse is restricted to the highest order of subjects. Examples of heroic and blank verse were given in the application of the cæsural pause.

Verses, or lines, are arranged in stanzas, or successive portions, according to rhyme,-the correspondence of the sound of syllables to each other; and hence the further subdivision of iambic verse, as classed in couplets or distichs. Thus, are formed heroic verse, and the couplet of four iambuses, or eight syllables in each line, (called therefore octosyllabic,) of which the following is an example:

"The way was long, the wind was cold,
The minstrel was infirm and old;
His wither'd cheek and tresses gray
Seem'd to have known a better day.
The harp, his sole remaining joy,
Was carried by an orphan boy."

A very common form of iambic verse, is the quatrain or stanza of four lines, in which the rhyme occurs on alternate lines, according to their correspondence in the number of their syllables; the first and third lines containing eight syllables, or four iambic feet; and the second and fourth, six syllables, or three feet; as in the following example:

"The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but him had fled;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck,
Shone round him, o'er the dead;
"Yet beautiful and bright he stood,
As born to rule the storm,

A creature of heroic blood,

A proud though childlike form."

A less common form of the iambic stanza is that in which no verse contains more than three iambic feet or their equivalents. This species of stanza belongs to pieces of great force and animation.

"It was the wild midnight:

A storm was on the sky;

The lightning gave its light,
And the thunder echoed by.-
"The torrent swept the glen,

The ocean lash'd the shore;
Then rose the Spartan men

To make their bed in gore."

Trochaic verse occurs more rarely in separate compositions, being usually interspersed with iambic measure, for variety of rhythm. It is exemplified in Milton's L'Allegro.

"Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures, While the landscape round it measures;

Russet lawns and fallows gray,

Where the nibbling flocks do stray,

Meadows trim with daisies pied,

Shallow brooks and rivers wide."*

Anapastic measure is found chiefly in the following forms-the longer, containing four feet; and the shorter, containing three.

Of the former, the following stanzas are examples: "The evening was glorious; and light through the trees,

Play the sunshine and rain-drops, the birds and the breeze;

*The landscape, outstretching in loveliness, lay On the lap of the year, in the beauty of May.

"For the Queen of the Spring, as she pass'd down the vale,

Left her robe on the trees, and her breath on the gale;

And the smile of her promise gave joy to the hours, And flush in her footsteps sprang herbage and flowers."

The shorter anapæstic stanza is exemplified in the following extract.

*Some writers prefer to class this and similar measures under the general head of iambic verse, deficient in one syllable at the beginning of each line. The trochaic scanning, however, is better adapted to reading or recitation.

The first foot of such verses, is sometimes an iambus,