A psalm or hymn in short meter, marked S. M., consists of four-line stanzas, the third line tetrameter iambic, and the first, second, and fourth trimeter iambic, as this:

Stand up and bless the Lord,

Ye people of his choice;

Stand up and bless the Lord your God

With heart and soul and voice.

A hymn in hallelujah meter, marked H. M., consists of eight-line stanzas (the last four sometimes written as two), the first, second, third, and fourth trimeter iambic, and the remaining four dimeter iambic, as this:

The warbling notes pursue,

And louder anthems raise,
While mortals sing with you
Their own Redeemer's praise;
And thou, my heart,
With equal flame

And joy the same
Perform thy part.

A hymn in long particular meter, marked L. P. M., consists of six-line stanzas, all tetrameter iambic, 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, whose feet are not iambic, 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 meter, two of the three elements that determine the form of poetry, have been examined and illus

trated. We come now to the third and last element, which is not necessary or universal.

2. 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 — the accented vowel and what follows, identical, as in this couplet: :

A man he was to all the country dear,

And passing rich with forty pounds a year.

-

If the final foot 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 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 letters 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 fitted to the spirit, and deepen the effect upon the feelings.

Direction. Point out all illustrations of these in the preceding

Lesson.

The stanza named Spenserian from Edmund Spenser, its inventor, is a stanza of nine lines, or verses. Eight of these are pentameter, and the last is an Alexandrine composed of six iambic feet. Note what lines rhyme in this stanza, and what is the effect of the extra foot in the last line:

The sky is changed! and such a change! O night
And storm and darkness, ye are wondrous strong,
Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light
Of a dark eye in woman! Far along,
From peak to peak, the rattling crags among,
Leaps the live thunder! not from one lone cloud,
But every mountain now hath found a tongue,
And Jura answers, through her misty shroud,
Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud!

Direction.

Note (1) the feet in the psalms and hymns just described, and (2) the number of lines in the sonnet (6, Lesson 83), the meter, and the rhyme.

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 rhymes some 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 Siddartha sighed.

Direction.

Scan the poetry of this Lesson.

LESSON 82.

WRITTEN DISCOURSE-POETRY, KINDS OF.

I. 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, meter, 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. Still, there is that which we must name didactic poetry. We are compelled to call that poetry which is poetic in form, even if not eminently so in spirit.