of a sort occurring alternately, the chain of rhyme is continuous-hence chain-rhyme might serve as its appellation. It is as if the verses were in triplets, and the mean of one trio became the extreme of the next. No original poem has been written in English in this measure :

About the middle of life's onward way,
I found myself within a darksome dell,
Because from the true path I went astray.
Alas! how hard a thing it is to tell
Of that dark wood so rugged and so bare;
Anew I fear when there in thought I dwell.
Scarce death itself more bitterness doth wear.
Yet to make known the good which thus I found,
Now all my sorrows shall my tale declare.
I know not how I came within its bound;
Such heavy slumbers on mine eyelids weighed,
The while I entered the forbidden ground.
But when I near a mountain's foot was stayed,
Hard by the ending of the vale, which now
With such sharp terror all my heart affrayed.
MRS. RAMSAY.

The next is an instance of blank verse arrangement in union with couplet rhyme, this latter being, as it were, supernumerary, not controlling the movement of the verse in the least:

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore on every morrow are we wreathing

A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'erdarkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits.-KEATS.

The following is an example of the same length line, treated with regard to its pauses and construction like blank verse, but still rhymed at irregular distances:

My life was at its end—I died;

My last fond prayer was breathed to heaven for him,
And God had mercy on me; I was sent

To yonder star, where happiest spirits bide

In sunshine everlasting, and in bliss

Whose heavenly splendour never may grow dim.
Then came the sadness of my discontent.
On earth I knew not what was false or true,
But lived in dazzling mist like millions do;
Thinking what men call good was very good—
Alas! the word 's on earth misunderstood;
And then I knew my lover was misled
Like others, placing his sole happiness
In what was truly evil, &c.-E. KENEALY,

Six-foot.-The couplet of this length was used by Drayton and Chapman for the same purpose as the heroic verse, which later drove it out of fashion. It forms a measure with an ancient quaintness somewhat rude :—

But when the approaching foes still following, he perceives
That he his speed must trust, his usual walk he leaves;
And o'er the champain flies; which when the assembly find,
Each follows, as his horse were footed with the wind.
But being then imbost, the noble stately deer,
When he hath gotten ground (the kennel cast arrear),
Doth beat the brooks and ponds for sweet refreshing soil;
That serving not, then proves if he his scent can foil,
And makes among the herds and flocks of shag-wooled sheep,
Them frighting from the guard of those who would them keep.
DRAYTON.

Note here the difference between the pause of sense and the pause of rhythm. In the first line the sense requires a stop at 'following,' the rhythm would place it at foes,' and at the end of the line. Again, in the fourth verse, the stop after the word 'follows' is almost disregarded, the real cesura occurring mid-line after horse.' The like observation may be made in the eighth line.

In five-foot verse there is no divergence between the cesura and stop, the pause in sense coinciding with the other, and indeed determining its position; but here, owing to the greater length of line, the rhythmic force has become so much stronger

that the sentential pause must conform more to the rhythmic, or suffer for it by partial or total neglect in pronunciation.

Seven-foot is the longest form of march metre ever found, and that but rarely, it being commonly divided into the ballad form of four and three, already given. As used by Chapman in his translation of the Iliad, this measure would seem obsolete; but so much depends on the handling that in Macaulay's 'Armada' it seems as modern as any :

The king is come to marshal us in all his armour drest,
And he has bound a snow-white plume upon his gallant crest.
He looked upon his people, and a tear was in his eye;

He looked upon the traitors, and his glance was stern and high.
Right graciously he smiled on us, as rolled from wing to wing,
Down all our line, a deafening shout, God save our lord the king.
'And if our standard-bearer fall, as fall full well he may,

For never saw I promise yet of such a bloody fray,

Press where ye see my white plume shine, amidst the ranks of war; And be your oriflamme to-day the helmet of Navarre.'

It is perhaps advisable to give a few instances of the use of double rhyme, as it modifies the expression of the verse considerably, adding to it a syllable over measure. Even independently of rhyme, this feature is always noticeable:

Come ye so early,

Days of delight?
Making the hillside

Blithesome and bright?

Merrily, merrily,

Little brooks rush,

Down by the meadow

Under the bush.-AYTOUN.

The odd syllable over seen to occur alternately throughout adds much to the quickness of the measure wherever introduced; in so short a specimen doubly so, almost taking the sample out of march metre altogether into another group, for it is at once apparent that if the verses were written in couplet form, the last foot would from this cause be quick regularly.

Couplet use of double rhyme occurring constantly is rare:—

When from our ships we bounded,
I heard with fear astounded
The storm of Thorgerd's making,
From northern vapours breaking;
With flinty masses blended,
Gigantic hail descended,
And thick and fiercely rattled
Against us there embattled.
To aid the hostile maces,

It drifted in our faces;

It drifted dealing slaughter,

And blood ran out like water.-G. BORROW.

The sweetness of a lyric often greatly depends on this insignificant particular of double rhyme, but the close of any verse goes for much in the mental impression :

Hugged in the clinging billows' clasp,

From seaweed fringe to mountain heather,
The British oak with rooted grasp

Her slender handful holds together;
With cliffs of white and bowers of green,
And ocean narrowing to caress her,
And hills and threaded streams between,
Our little Mother Isle, God bless her.

HOLMES (American).

It is not meant to imply that this form gives sweetness, but that it imparts a certain heightening effect to the ground tone; in the next and closing example, it is rather force and sublimity :--

O Lord! who art our God, perfection's splendour,
We bow before thy thrones of cloud and fire;
To thee, whose footstool are the heavens, we render
The joy and worship that our hearts inspire.
As leap the rills from the eternal mountains,
As the streams seek the everflowing sea,

As runs the fawn from the bright, cooling fountains,
So turn our fainting spirits still to thee.-E. KENEALY.

V.

TRIPPING METRE.

TURNING now to the consideration of the metre, denominated tripping from the pace at which it moves, composed wholly of two-syllabled feet, with the accent on the first, it will be found much the same phenomena are repeated as in verses of the forward run, only on a less complete and elaborate scale.

In this metre, battling up, as it were, against the stream of speech, the accents are endowed with a greater average of distinctness than in the opposite run. Nothing of the nature of the hover is met with, every successive step being invariably accented, whether falling on words ordinarily capable

on not.

In the unrhymed form this metre seems to incline most naturally to a length of four feet, best known by Longfellow's admirable poem of 'Hiawatha':—

Dównward through the| évening | twilight,

In the days that are for gotten,
In the unremembered ages,

From the full moon | fell Nokomis,
Fell the beautiful No | komis,
She a wife, but not a | mother.

She was sporting with her women,
Swinging in a swing of grape vines,
When her rival, the rejected,
Full of jealousy and hatred,

Cut the leafy swing asunder,

Cut in twain the twisted grape vines,

And Nokomis fell affrighted

Downward through the evening twilight,

On the muskoday, the meadow,

On the prairie, full of blossoms.

See, a star falls! said the people;

From the sky a star is falling!

This, the blank verse of the tripping metre, has a daintiness about it which is most pleasing, requiring no prophet to