Training in Lyric Poetry & Verse for songwriters.
With Complete Rhyming Dictionary
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MIXED METRES. |
59 |
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 Other combinations are those of different kinds of verse, viz. the iambic with the three others ; the trochaic with the anapestic and dactylic, and the two last together. These combinations are made according to the fancy of the writer, in a variety of degrees: sometimes no greater than single versejs, or parts of a verse, as in this of Dryden's Ode, the anapestic with the iambic :
And amazed | he stares | around.
Another line in the same ode is of ambiguous measure. The latter half is anapestic ; so the first may be, but it reads and scans better as trochaic :
These are | Grecian | ghosts that in | battle were | slain.
Such combinations are to be observed as matters of curiosity rather than imitated.
Ariel's Song in the Tempest combines the trochaic with the dactylic:
On the bat's back I do fly
After summer merrily ; Merrily, merrily shall I live now Under the blossom that hangs on th»boujjh. |
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