^ ^ ^
"The snow had begun in the gloaming,
^ ^ ^
And busily all the night
^ ^ ^
Had been heaping field and highway
^ ^ ^
With a silence deep and white."

_A line containing four feet is called tetrameter._ "Marmion" is
written in tetrameters. See the extract on p. 276.

_A line containing five feet is called pentameter._ This line is very
common in English poetry. It gives room enough for the poet to say
something, and is not so long that it breaks down with its own weight.
Shakespeare's Plays, Milton's "Paradise Lost," Tennyson's "Idylls of
the King,"--indeed, most of the great, serious work of the
master-poets has been done in this verse.

_A line containing six feet is called hexameter._ This is the form
adopted in the Iliad and the Odyssey of the Greeks, and the Aeneid of
the Romans; it has been used sometimes by English writers in treating
dignified subjects. "The Courtship of Miles Standish" and "Evangeline"
are written in hexameter.

Verses of seven and eight feet are rare; they are called heptameter
and octameter, respectively. The heptameter is usually divided into a
tetrameter and a trimeter; the octameter, into two tetrameters. Poe's
"Raven" and Tennyson's "Locksley Hall" are in octameters, and Bryant's
"The Death of the Flowers" is in heptameters.

A verse is named from its prevailing kind of foot and the number of
feet. For example, "The Merchant of Venice" is in iambic pentameter,
and "The Courtship of Miles Standish" is in dactylic hexameter.

Stanzas.

A stanza is a group of verses, but these verses are not necessarily of
the same length. Monometer, dimeter, and trimeter are not often used
for a whole stanza; but they are frequently found in a stanza,
introducing variety into it. A stanza made up of tetrameter
alternating with trimeter is very common. The stanzas from "Annabel
Lee" and "The Village Blacksmith," found on pages 278 and 279, are
excellent examples.

Scansion.

_Scansion is the separation of a verse of poetry into its component
feet._ Poetry was originally sung or chanted by bards and troubadours.
The accompaniment was a simple strumming on a harp of very few
strings, and was hardly more than the beating of time. The chanting
must have been much like the sing-song that some people fall into when
reading verses now. The first thing