When in my tomb I shall calmly recline
O carry my heart to my conqueror dear;
Tell her it lived upon smiles and on wine
Of brilliant hue, while it lingered here.
I will now arrange the same passage so as to reduce it entirely to dissyllable feet, which alters the character of the versification.
When in death I calm recline,
O bear my heart to her I love;
Say it liv’d on smiles and wine
Of brightest hue, while here above.
Bid her shed no tear of grief
To soil a heart so clear and bright;
But drops of kind remembrance give
To bathe the gem from morn to night.
As the dissyllable feet may be divided either as dactyls or as anapæsts, so the dissyllable feet may be divided either as trochees or as iambuses. Thus we may scan either of these ways—
O | bear my | heart to | her I | love,
O bear | my heart | to her | I love.
But in this case, as in that of dissyllable feet, the metre is more decidedly trochaic, because each line, (that is, each distich, as here written,) begins with a strong syllable.
When in | death I | calm re | cline.
The animated trochaic character, when once given by a few lines of this kind, continues in the movement of the verse, even when retarded by initial iambuses; as,
“Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee
Jest and youthful jollity:
Quips and cranks and wanton wiles,
Nods and becks and wreathed smiles;
Such as dwell on Hebe’s cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek,
Sport that wrinkled care derides,
And laughter holding both his sides.”
Here the weak syllables And, And, do not materially interrupt the trochaic verse. They may be taken as completing the trochee at the end of the preceding line.