y lines of approximately 8+8 and 7+7
syllables were common, and lines of 6+6, or of nine,
syllables were then, as now, also occasionally used.[27]

[Footnote 27: Verses of three or four syllables are
best treated as half-lines, with inner rime (_versos
leoninos_).]

The most popular measure, and the one of most importance
in the history of Spanish verse, is the 8+8-syllable line
of the old _romances_, which was later divided into two
8-syllable lines, and became the most common measure in
the drama and in popular songs. This line usually has
only one rhythmic accent, which falls on the seventh
syllable.[28]

[Footnote 28: By "rhythmic accent" is meant the musical
accent on the last stressed syllable of a phrase and not
syllabic stresses that may occur within a phrase.]

Mis arreos son las armas,
mi descanso el pelear,
mi cama las duras penas,
mi dormir siempre velar
(p. 5, ll. 1-4)
page lxii
Rarely 8-syllable lines are written with a fixed accent on
the third syllable (cf. p. 51, l. 10 f.).[29] There is then
sometimes _pie quebrado_ in alternate lines, as in:

Hijo mio mucho amado,
Para mientes;
No contrastes a las gentes
Mal su grado.
Ama: e seras amado;
Y podras
Hazer lo que no haras
Desamado.[30]

[Footnote 29: They are less common in Spanish than in
Italian:

Sai tu dirme, o fanciullino,
In qual pasco gita sia
La vezzosa Egeria mia
Ch'io pur cerco dal mattino?
(Paolo A. Rolli)]

[Footnote 30: Note the example of hiatus in this older
Spanish.]

Next to the popular 8-syllable line the most important
measure in modern Spanish verse is that of eleven
syllables, with binary movement, which came to Spain from
Italy in the fifteenth century, and was generally accepted
by the writers of the Siglo de Oro. This 11-syllable line,
though of foreign origin, has held the boards as the chief
erudite measure in Spanish verse for four centuries, and
taken all in all it is the noblest metrical form for
serious poems in modern Spanish. A striking peculiarity
of the line is its flexibility. It is not divided into
hemistichs as were its predecessors, the 14-syllable
Alexandrine and the 12-syllable _arte mayor_ verse; but
it consists of two phrases and the position of the inner
rhythmic accent is usually variable.
page lxiii
A well constru