The blithe swállows are flówn, and the lízards each góne
To his dwélling.
In Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, III. ii. 448–63 (apart from the four-foot trochaic end-lines of the half-stanzas), we also have such verses apparently; the iambic-anapaestic character being clearly shown by a couplet like the following:
When thou wákest,
Thou tákest.[174]
II. Trochaic-dactylic Metres
§ 198. These are much rarer than the iambic-anapaestic metres. Specimens of all of them are quoted, but some are only theoretical examples invented by, and repeated from, English or American metrists.
Theoretically the acatalectic dactylic verse in its rhymed form ought always to have trisyllabic or at least feminine caesura and ending. As a fact, however, these metres have just as frequently or perhaps more frequently masculine caesuras and rhymes.
The eight-foot trochaic-dactylic verse, alternating occasionally with iambic-anapaestic lines, occurs in Longfellow’s The Golden Legend, iv:[175]