147. Rhythm.-Poetry also adopts the use of rhyth. mical language, or expressions that have a musical sound. We see the first elements of this tendency in many of the oldest proverbs, such as "Man proposes, God disposes;" "Easy come, easy go."

148. Accent. The measuring of language by Poetry consists in the regular recurrence of similarly accented syllables at short intervals.

149. Verse.-A Verse is a limited number of syllables with an established order of accents, usually written in one line, as:

"The curfew tolls, the knell of parting day." Verses may vary in length and accent. other specimens:

"To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek!"
"In your kingdom of vanity, give him a place."
"Take her up tenderly."

We give

The word verse is sometimes used to denote all forms of poetry.

150. Stanzas. - A collection of verses of a certain defined number and order is called a Stanza.

"Thou art, O God, the life and light
Of all this wondrous world we see ;
Its glow by day, its smile by night
Are but reflections caught from Thee:
Where'er we turn, thy glories shine,

And all things fair and bright are Thine.”

Stanzas vary much in the number of their verses or lines, also in their length, accent, and order. The most noted kind is perhaps the Spenserian stanza, of which the following is a specimen :

POETICAL FEET.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,

By the deep sea, and music in its roar.
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal

From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe, and feel

What I can ne'er express, yet can not all conceal."

151. Poetical Feet.-Any regular succession of syllables is called a foot. Thus two syllables equally accented in immediate succession are called a spondee, but no entire verse could be made up of spondees. ⚫ “Painfully he rolled the stone High up the hill."

A short or unaccented syllable, and a long or accented syllable immediately following, make an iambus. An anapest consists of three syllables, the last being accented.

A trochee consists of two syllables, the first being accented.

A dactyl consists of three syllables, the first being accented.

The iambus and anapest may be used promiscuously, as they sound alike.

Also the trochee and dactyl may be interchanged for each other.

A short pause is required by the ear at the close of every line of verse, if it is written properly, even though the grammatical sense does not require it.

Also somewhere in a long line, generally near the middle, a pause is required by the melody, called a cæsural pause.

All the principles of verse are laid down and illustrated in elementary treatises on grammar, and it is not deemed necessary in this work to dwell minutely upon them.

152. Various Kinds of Verse.-Verse is divided into various kinds, according to the kind of foot principally or solely employed. Thus we have iambic, trochaic, anapestic, and dactylic verse.

The iambic measure is the most common, and when each line has five iambic feet, or at most five with a short syllable added, it is said to be in the heroic

measure.

"Him first to love, great right and reason is,
Who first to us our life and being gave;

And after, when we faced had amiss,

Us wretches from the second death did save."

An Alexandrine verse consists of six iambuses, as follows:

"A needless Alexandrine ends the song,

Which, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.”

Trochaic, anapestic, and dactylic verse respectively, consist of the feet indicated by the name. We give specimens of the three kinds successively:

"Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes; they were souls that stood alone,
While the men they agonized for hurled the contumelious stone,
Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden beam incline,
To the side of perfect justice, master'd by their faith divine,
By one man's plain truth to manhood and to God's supreme design."

"What a mercy is this! What a heavenly bliss!

How unspeakably happy am I!

Gathered into the fold, with thy people enrolled,
With thy people to live and to die."

HEXAMETER VERSE.

"Cling to the crucified!

His death is life to thee!
Life for eternity:

His pains thy pardon seal,
His stripes thy bruises heal,
His cross proclaims thy peace,
Bids every sorrow cease,
His blood is all to thee:
Cling to the crucified!"

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153. Various Metres.-The mingling of these various measures, and the employment of verses of various lengths, and stanzas varying in the number of their verses, give us the numberless metres or kinds of versification actual and possible.

Many more are employed in modern times than were known to the ancients, and some that were much used in former times are now almost wholly neglected.

154. Hexameter Verse. The hexameter verse, in which the Iliad of Homer and the Eneid of Virgil were written, was the kind most prized by the Greeks and Romans for the most dignified, elevated poetry. For a long time it was thought to be incompatible with the accent of the English language, but of late some good English hexameters have been written. Still it is in English an exotic, not "to the manner born," and, except for short productions, not likely to command the interest of many readers. We give a specimen from Longfellow :

Even as rivulets twain, from distant and separate sources,
Seeing each other afar, as they leap from the rocks and pursuing
Each one its devious path, but drawing nearer and nearer,
Rush together at last, at their trysting-place in the forest :

So these lives that had run thus far in separate channels,

Coming in sight of each other, then swerving and flowing asunder, Parted by barriers strong, but drawing nearer and nearer,

Rushed together at last, and one was lost in the other."

155. The Sonnet. Some of the most elegant and labored short poems have been in the form called a Sonnet. The following is a good spécimen, from J. Blanco White:

"Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew
Thee from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,

This glorious canopy of light and blue?
Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew,

Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus, with the host of heaven, came,

And lo! creation widened in man's view.

Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O Sun? or who could find,
Whilst fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed,
That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind?
Why do we, then, shun death with anxious strife?
If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life ?"

156. Rhyme.-Rhyme is the correspondence in the sound of the terminating syllables of two lines in immediate succession, or not far removed from each other. Sometimes certain other syllables in two lines immediately succeeding each other correspond in sound, or constitute rhyme. This is by some said to be a modern invention, simply because the ancient Greek and Latin poets did not employ it, but it was employed in the Sanscrit and other early Asiatic literature long before the Christian era.

157. Alliteration.-Alliteration, or the repetition of the same sound at the beginning of successive words, has been used as an ornament in poetry, but never to