A hymn in long particular metre, marked L. P. M., consists of six-line stanzas, all tetrameter, as this:

Judges, who rule the world by laws,
Will ye despise the righteous cause,
When the oppressed before you stands?
Dare ye condemn the righteous poor,
And let rich sinners go secure,

While gold and greatness bribe your hands?

Other hymns, marked 4's or 8's or 6's or 8's and 7's, etc., etc., are found in our books. These numerals mark the number of syllables in a verse.

Rhythm and metre, two of the three elements which determine the form of poetry, have been examined and illustrated. We come now to the third and last element, which is not necessary but accidental.

3. RHYME.-Rhyme is the accordance in sound of the final syllables of verses. A couplet is the two verses which rhyme with each other. The rhyming syllables must not be completely identical in sound but only similar-identical from the accented vowel to the end, as in this couplet:

A man he was to all the country dear

And passing rich with forty pounds a year.

If the final foct in each verse of the couplet is accented on the last syllable but one,—is a trochee or an amphibrach—the syllables next to the last must rhyme, the last syllables, in this case, being identical. Such rhymes, called double rhymes, are illustrated in the first and third verses below:

But the young, young children, O my brothers,
Do you ask them why they stand

Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers
In our happy father-land?

If the final foot in each verse of the couplet is a dactyl, the last syllable but two in one verse is that which must rhyme with the corresponding syllable in the other. Such rhymes, called triple rhymes, are illustrated in the first and third verses below:

Take her up tenderly,

Lift her with care,
Fashioned so slenderly,
Young and so fair.

LINE-RHYME is the agreement in sound between the final letters of two words or of two syllables of words in the same verse, as in these lines which we borrow from Marsh:

1. Her look was like the morning star.

2. Here in front you can see the very dint of the bullet.

3. Long at the window he stood, and wistfully gazed on the landscape.

These verses from Poe, Marsh would say, do not contain line-rhymes, since at beams and rise the first and third lines might be broken, each into two, and then the rhyme would be terminal, or ordinary, rhyme:

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

ALLITERATION, the repetition of the same letter or let ters at the beginning of words, is also found in poetry. as in these verses:

1. There lived in Lombardy, as authors write, In dayës old a wise and worthy Knight

2. And rivulets, rejoicing, rush and leap.

3. He rushed into the field, and foremost fighting, fell, 4. Steady, straightforward, and strong, with irresistible logic.

Rhyme proper, or terminal rhyme, line-rhyme and alliteration are all repetitions of similar sounds. They are agreeable to the ear in poetry. They accord with the other appliances by which the form of poetry is 3 fitted to the spirit, and deepen the effect upon the feel- 4. ings.

Direction.-Point out all illustrations of these in the preceding

Lesson.

Rhyme in English is more difficult than it is in languages highly inflected, and abounding in common terminations. It has been estimated that casting out the English words incapable of rhyme, the ratio of those which have rhymes to the total number of rhyming endings is as three to one; or, to turn it about, the number of different rhymes in English to the words having them is as one to three. This is very much less than in many other modern languages. This poverty in rhyme in English accounts for many inexact rhymessome of which may be seen in the extracts of the preceding Lesson-and for the introduction and wide adoption, especially in long poems, of blank-verse.

BLANK-VERSE is verse without rhyme. Here are a few lines in it :

But, looking deep, he saw

The thorns which grow upon this rose of life:
How the swart peasant sweated for his wage,
Toiling for leave to live; and how he urged
The great-eyed oxen through the flaming hours,
Goading their velvet flanks: then marked he, too,
How lizard fed on ant, and snake on him,
And kite on both; and how the fish-hawk robbed
The fish-tiger of that which it had seized;
The shrike chasing the bulbul, which did chase
The jewelled butterflies; till everywhere

Each slew a slayer and in turn was slain,
Life living upon death. So the fair show
Veiled one vast, savage, grim conspiracy
Of mutual murder, from the worm to man,
Who himself kills his fellow; seeing which—
The hungry ploughman and his laboring kine,
Their dewlaps blistered with the bitter yoke,
The rage to live which makes all living strife—
The Prince Siddârtha sighed.

Direction.-Scan the poetry of this Lesson.

LESSON 82.

WRITTEN DISCOURSE—POETRY, KINDS OF.

DIDACTIC POETRY.-Didactic poetry is that which aims to teach. But to call that which directly aims to teach, poetry, is to be guilty of a misnomer. (In so far as poetry aims directly at instruction, it usurps, as has been said, the function of prose. Prose is free from all the artifices and all the restraints of poetry-rhythm, metre, rhyme those peculiarities of poetry which solicit our thoughts from the subject-matter, and fix them attentively upon the expression of it. That poetry, then, which essays to teach, "defeats its strong intent," the charm and fascination of the form withdrawing us from the instruction conveyed; the instruction, if attended to, luring us away from the beauty of the expression. While, therefore, we call such compositions poetry, didactic poetry, we do it under protest, compelled to name that poetry which is poetic in form even if not in spirit,

SATIRICAL POETRY.-Satirical poetry is that which lashes the vices and follies of men. Its aim is destructive, its spirit often malevolent; there is little of sweetness in it, the feelings which engender it and those to which it ministers are not the most healthful and humane. When the relations of poets to poets and to critics were less friendly or even courteous than they are now, poetry of *his kind, in poems of great length, abounded. But since Addison's day, when English prose first overtook poetry and commenced running abreast with it, satire, as well as instruction, has sought expression through prose; and both satirical and didactic poetry have lost favor, and are not now cultivated as they were. The great satires of Dryden and of Pope did much, Thackeray thinks, to bring the profession of literature into contempt.

LYRIC POETRY.-Lyric poetry is that which is written to be sung. The range of its topics is wide, but the range of feelings which inspire it and which it inspires is narrow; within this realm, however, its reign is supreme. Lyric poetry may be divided into sacred and secular. Hymns and psalms, expressing our feelings toward God, constitute the one; songs relating to battle, to patriotism, to party, and to sociality, and odes, elegies, and sonnets form the bulk of the other. The ode, a poem longer than an ordinary song and full of lofty passion; the elegy, also a long poem whose burden is regret for the dead; and the sonnet, a poem of fourteen lines, cannot always be called lyric now, if we rigidly restrict lyric to poetry which is sung.

Prof. Hadley says, "The poetry of our day has been almost exclusively lyrical; our poets have, to a singular extent, been song-writers." And he accounts for this by adding, "Moving hotly and hurriedly in the career of politics, or swallowed up in business, or prosecuting