"While spake the eternals,
Thrill'd through nature an awful earthquake. Souls that had never
Known the dawning of thought, now started, and felt for the first time.
Shudders and trembling of heart assail'd each seraph; his bright orb
Hush'd as the earth when tempests are nigh, before him was pausing.
But in the souls of future Christians vibrated transports,
Sweet pretastes of immortal existence. Foolish against God,
Aught to have plann'd or done, and alone yet alive to despondence,
Fell from thrones in the fiery abyss the spirits of evil,
Rocks broke loose from the smouldering caverns, and fell on the falling:
Howlings of woe, far-thundering crashes, resounded through hell's vaults."
It seems to me that such verses as these might very well have satisfied the English admirers of Klopstock.
You will observe, however, that we have, in the passage which I have quoted, several examples of those forced trochees which I mentioned in my first letter, as one of the great blemishes of English hexameters; namely, these—first tĭme; bright ŏrb; agaīnst Gŏd; hēll's văults. And these produce their usual effect of making the verse in some degree unnatural and un-English.
It is, however, true, that in this respect the German hexametrist has a considerable advantage over the English. Many of the words which are naturally thrown to the end of a verse by the sense, are monosyllables in English, while the corresponding German word is a trochaic dissyllable, which takes its place in the verse smoothly and familiarly. In consequence of this difference in the two languages, the Englishman is often compelled to lengthen his monosyllables by various artifices. Thus, in Herman and Dorothea—
"Und er wandte sich schnell; de sah sie ihm Thränen im auge."
"And he turned him quick; then saw she tears in his eyelids."
In order that I may not be misunderstood, however, I must say that I by no means intend to proscribe such final trochees as I have spoken of, composed of two monosyllables, but only to recommend a sparing and considerate use of them. They occur in Goethe, though not abundantly. Thus in Herman and Dorothea, we have three together:—
"Und es brannten die strassen bis zum markt, und das Haus war,
Meines Vaters hierneben verzchrt und diesar zugleich mit,
Wenig flüchtehen wir. Ich safs, die traurige Nacht durch."
None of these trochees, however, are so spondaic as the English ones which I formerly quoted, consisting of a monosyllable-adjective with a monosyllable-substantive—"the weight of his right hand;" or two substantives, as "the heat of a love's fire."
Yet even these endings are admissible occasionally. Every one assents to Harris's recognition of a natural and perfect hexameter in that verse of the Psalms—