Down the wake of the dark-prowed ships,

Over the course of the racing steed

Where the clustering tendrils breed

Grapes to drown dull care in delight,

Oh! mother make me a child again just for to-night!

I don't exactly see how that last line is to scan,

But that's a consideration I leave to our musical man.

THE PROLOGUES OF EURIPIDES

From 'The Frogs'

[The point of the following selection lies in the monotony of both narrative style and metre in Euripides's prologues, and especially his regular cæsura after the fifth syllable of a line. The burlesque tag used by Aristophanes to demonstrate this effect could not be applied in the same way to any of the fourteen extant plays of Sophocles and Æschylus.]