the on is more weighty than the same syllable in upon. Hence, in these cases, smiles and, lived on, approach to spondees. But still there is a decided preponderance in the first syllables of each of these feet respectively.
I have hitherto considered dactylics with rhyme; of course the measure may be preserved, though the rhyme be omitted, either at the end of the alternate lines; as
When in my tomb I am calmly lying,
O bear my heart to my mistress dear:
Tell her it liv’d upon smiles and nectar
Of brightest hue, while it lingered here:
Or altogether; as
Bid her not shed one tear of sorrow
To sully a heart so brilliant and bright;
But drops from fond remembrance gather,
And bathe for ever the relic in these.
In the absence of rhyme, each distich is detached, and the number of such distiches, or long lines, may be either odd or even.
I shall now take a shorter dactylic measure; and first, with alternate rhymes.
Tityrus, you laid along,
In the shade of umbrageous beeches,
Practise your pastoral song,
As your muse in your solitude teaches.
We from the land that we love
From all that we value and treasure,
We must as exiles remove:
While, Tityrus, you at your leisure
Make all the woods to resound
Amaryllis’s name at your pleasure.
We see, in this example that the rhyme is a fetter to the construction. In this case, it is necessary to have three distichs which rhyme, in order to close the metre with the sentence.
We detach these distichs, or long lines, from each other, by rejecting the use of rhyme between successive distichs. We might make the two parts of the same long line rhyme thus:—