at all | he meets
So forlorn;
And he shakes | his fee |-ble head,
That it seems | as if | he said,
They are gone.

4.
The mos |-sy mar |-bles rest
On the lips | that he | has press'd
In their bloom;
And the names | he lov'd | to hear
Have been carv'd | for man |-y a year
On the tomb.

5.
My grand |-mamma | has said,--
Poor old La |-dy! she | is dead
Long ago,--
That he had | a Ro |-man nose,
And his cheek | was like | a rose
In the snow.

6.
But now | his nose | is thin,
And it rests | upon | his chin
Like a staff;
And a crook | is in | his back
And a mel |-anchol |-y crack
In his laugh.

7.
I know | it is | a sin
For me [thus] | to sit | and grin
At him here;
But the old | three-cor |-ner'd hat,
And the breech |-es, and | all that,
Are so queer!

8.
And if I | should live | to be
The last leaf | upon | the tree
In the spring,--
Let them smile, | as I | do now,
At the old | forsak |-en bough
Where I cling."
OLIVER W. HOLMES: _The Pioneer_, 1843, p. 108.

OBSERVATIONS.

OBS. 1.--Composite verse, especially if the lines be short, is peculiarly
liable to uncertainty, and diversity of scansion; and that which does not
always abide by one chosen order of quantities, can scarcely be found
agreeable; it must be more apt to puzzle than to please the reader. The
eight stanzas of this last example, have eight lines of _iambic trimeter_;
and, since seven times in eight, this metre holds the first place in the
stanza, it is a double fault, that one such line seems strayed from its
proper position. It would be better to prefix the word _Now_ to the fourth
line, and to mend the forty-third thus:--

"And should | I live | to be"--

The trissyllabic feet of this piece, as I scan it, are numerous; being the
sixteen short lines of monometer, and the twenty-four initial feet of the
lines of seven syllables. Every one of the forty--(except the thirty-sixth,
"_The_ last leaf"--) begins with a monosyllable which may be varied in
quantity; so that, with stress laid on this monosyllable, the foot becomes
an _amphimac_; without such stress, an _anapest_.

OBS. 2.--I incline to read this piece as composed of iambs and anapests;
but E. A. Poe, who has commended "the effective harmony of these lines,"