Practical Guide to English Versification / With a Compendious Dictionary of Rhymes, an Examination / of Classical Measures, and Comments Upon Burlesque and / Comic Verse, Vers de Société, and Song-writing

by Tom Hood

Restore us, and regain the heavenly seat,

Sing, heavenly Muse."

The following stanza of Leyden was considered by Scott one of the most musical in the language, and it is rendered so mainly by its vowel variety:—

"How sweetly swell on Jura's heath

The murmurs of the mountain bee!

How sweetly mourns the writhèd shell,

Of Jura's shore, its parent sea!"

A passage from the "Laodamia" of Wordsworth may be pointed to as an equally striking illustration of the same rule:—

"He

Spake of heroic arts in graver mood