, verso sdrucciolo) endings (requiring respectively one syllable less and one syllable more than the verso piano) constitute occasional variations. We have found that these rarer lines are recognized rather as curiosities than as difficulties by the children who easily refer them to their respective normal types. They are accordingly presented in our material along with the common verses of trochaic endings. Our illustration of the five syllable line given above showed specimens of the dactyllic ending (sdrucciolo,
). Here is another example of alternating trochaic (piano) and dactyllic endings:
In címa a un álbero
C'é un uccellíno
Di nuóvo génere....
Che sía un bambíno?
(L. Schwarz, Uccellino.)
(Translation: "There's a very strange little bird up in that tree! Why, it's a little child!")
In the following decasyllables, the trochaic ending alternates with the iambic (tronco):
Lungi, lúngi, su l'áli del cánto
Di qui lúngi recáre io ti vó'
Là, ne i cámpi fioríti del sánto
Gange, un luógo bellíssimo, io só.
(Carducci, Lungi, lungi.)
(Translation: "I will take thee far, far away on the wings of my song: there, among the flowery fields of the sacred Ganges, I know of a beautiful spot").
Some difficulty arose, however, when we came to lines with alternations of parisyllables and imparisyllables; though this new movement aroused real enthusiasm among the children, who greeted it as a new and strange music. It often happened that after the pleasurable effort of analyzing a poem with lines alternating in this way, the pupils would choose as "recreation" the study of lines of even-numbered syllables. Here is an example of the new type: