Such a measure gives sentiment a ludicrous air, and consequently is ill adapted to serious subjects.
Great art may be used by a poet in choosing words and feet adapted to his subject. Take the following specimen.
"Now here, now there, the warriors fall; amain
Groans murmur, armor sounds, and shouts convulse the plain."
The feet in the last line are happily chosen. The slow Spondee, in the beginning of the verse, fixes the mind upon the dismal scene of woe; the solemnity is heightened by the pauses in the middle of the second and at the end of the third foot. But when the poet comes to shake the plains, he closes the line with three forcible Iambics.
Of a similar beauty take the following example.
"She all night long, her amorous descant sung."
The poet here designs to describe the length of the night, and the music of the Nightingale's song. The first he does by two slow Spondees, and the last by four very rapid syllables.
The following lines, from Gray's Elegy, written in a country church yard, are distinguished by a happy choice of words.
"For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd?
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing lingering look behind?"