She steals to the window, and looks at the sand, A long, long sigh, For the cold strange eyes of a little Mermaiden, And the gleam of her golden hair. M. ARNOLD. Heine's Grave. Rose called nightingales, I called thrushes. Sir G. YOUNG. CHAPTER VI. DACTYLIC METRES. THE dactylic measure is less common in English poetry than the anapaestic. It is varied by the substitution of trochee for dactyl in all the feet and by the prefixing of a hypermetrical syllable at the beginning, and the omission of two unaccented syllables at the end, as in Hood: It will be observed that, when a line begins with the hypermetrical syllable, the preceding line frequently ends with a trochee, so that the effect is simply to complete the dactylic rhythm. Sometimes we even find two hypermetrical syllables, when the final dactyl of the preceding line is represented by a long syllable, as in Hood's The) bleak wind of | March ^ Made her) tremble and | shiver, Nor the) black-flowing | river. It is easy to understand how this variation of the dactylic should pass unperceived into anapaestic metre, like the four-foot trochaic into four-foot iambic. Thus, in Scott's Pibroch of Donald Dhu, the anapaestic lines Leave untended the herd, The flock without shel(ter, are preceded and followed by the dactylic Come, every hill-plaid, and True heart that | wears one, Come with your | fighting gear, Tennyson in Merlin and the Gleam has two-foot dactylic: Then with a melody To the) city and palace Flashed on the tournament, In Kapiolani we have two-foot mixed with four-foot and eight-foot dactylic : When from the | terrors of | nature a | people have | fashioned and | worship a | spirit of | evil, Blest be the voice of the teacher who calls to them, 'Set yourselves | free ^ .' Floats, will the | glory of | Kapiolani be | mingled with | either on Hawai ee ^. George Meredith has an example of four-foot dactylic, with trochaic or spondaic substitution in the 3rd or 4th foot and truncation in the alternate lines, in Juggling Jerry, in which, as often in trisyllabic metres, the accents are rather tortured: Pitch here the | tent, while the old horse | grazes, By the old hedge-side we'll | halt a | stage ^; Yes, my old girl! and it's | no use | crying: Juggler, | constable, | King, must | bow ^ . One that out -juggles | all's been | spying Long to have me, and he | has me | now . He has a similar example of five-foot dactylic with trochaic substitution in the last three feet, and slurring of two short syllables in the 6th and 8th lines: Shy as the | squirrel and | wayward | as the | swallow, 1Hard, but O the | 1glory of the | winning | were she | won ^ ! G. MEREDITH2. Matthew Arnold has two-foot in his Bacchanalia: See on the cumbered plain, Clearing a stage ^, Scattering the past about, Bards make new poems, Life is their prize ^, Earth with their deeds they fill, Tennyson has a splendid metre which might be described as truncated seven-foot, alternating with six-foot, either of the dactylic or anapaestic metre. The last A superfluous syllable has to be slurred in this foot. 2 Sir G. Young notes here that no doubt Meredith took this metre from George Darley's song Sweet in her green dell the flower of beauty slumbers, Lulled by the faint breezes sighing through her hair; Sleeps she and hears not the melancholy numbers |