"Press where ye see my white plume shine,
Amid the ranks of war,
And be your Oriflamme to-day
The helmet of Navarre."
So Macaulay himself prints this metre in some of his Roman Lays.
But the student should rather avoid than seek this metre. The uniform old beat of eight and six is apt to fall monotonously on the ear, and some of the most startling effects are lost in it. In the Spirit of the Nation the student will find many other ballad metres. Campbell's metres, though new and glorious things, are terrible traps to imitation, and should be warily used. The German ballads, and, still more, Mr. Mangan's translations of them, contain great variety of new and safe, though difficult, metres. Next in frequency to the fourteen-syllable line is that in eleven syllables, such as "Mary Ambree" and "Lochinvar"; and for a rolling brave ballad 'tis a fine metre. The metre of fifteen syllables with double rhymes, (or accents) in the middle, and that of thirteen, with double rhymes at the end, is tolerably frequent, and the metre used by Father Prout, in his noble translation of "Duke D'Alençon," is admirable, and easier than it seems. By the way, what a grand burden runs through that ballad:—
"Fools! to believe the sword could give to the children of the Rhine,
Our Gallic fields—the land that yields the Olive and the Vine!"
The syllables are as in the common metre, but it has thrice the rhymes.
We have seen great materials wasted in a struggle with a crotchety metre; therefore, though we counsel the invention of metres, we would add that unless a metre come out racily and appropriately in the first couple of verses, it should be abandoned, and some of those easily marked metres taken up.