"Men whose lives glided on like the rivers that water the woodlands,
Darken'd by shadows of earth, but reflecting an image of Heaven."
Probably the best hexameters which have been composed in English are those in William Watson's Hymn to the Sea and those in which Hawtry translated Iliad III. 234-244, and the parting of Hector and Andromache in the Sixth Iliad, models—these versions—not merely of translation, but of hexametrical structure. There are, however, certain magical effects, particularly in the Virgilian hexameter, produced by an exquisite but audacious tact in the employment of licences, which can never be reproduced in English.
Such would be—
"Nam neque Parnassi vobis juga, nam neque Pindi
Ulla moram fecere, neque Aonie Aganippe.
Illum etiam lauri, etiam flevere myricæ;
Pinifer illum etiam solâ sub rupe jacentem
Mænalus et gelidi fleverunt saxa Lycæi."
Milton, and Milton alone among Englishmen, had the secret of this music, but he elicited it from another instrument.