Air 2.
"Consid |-er, fond shep |-h~erd,
How fleet |-ing's the pleas |-~ure,
That flat |-ters our hopes
In pursuit | of the fair:
The joys | that attend | ~it,
By mo |-ments we meas |-~ure;
But life | is too lit |-tle
To meas |-ure our care."
GAY'S POEMS: Johnson's Works of the Poets, VoL vii, p. 378.
These verses are essentially either anapestic or amphibrachic. The anapest divides two of them in the middle; the amphibrach will so divide eight. But either division will give many iambs. By the present scansion, the first foot is an iamb in all of them but the two anapestics.
Example V.—"The Last Leaf."
1.
"I saw | him once | before
As he pass |-~ed by | the door,
And again
The pave |-ment stones | resound
As he tot |-ters o'er | the ground
With his cane.
2.
They say | that in | his prime,
Ere the prun |-ing knife of Time
Cut him down,
Not a bet |-ter man | was found
By the cri |-er on | his round
Through the town.
3.
But now | he walks | the streets,
And he looks | at all | he meets
So forlorn;
And he shakes | his fee |-ble head,
That it seems | as if | he said,
They are gone.
4.
The mos |-sy mar |-bles rest
On the lips | that he | has press'd
In their bloom;
And the names | he lov'd | to hear
Have been carv'd | for man |-y a year
On the tomb.
5.
My grand |-mamma | has said,—
Poor old La |-dy! she | is dead
Long ago,—
That he had | a Ro |-man nose,
And his cheek | was like | a rose
In the snow.