Quotes About Hexameters

In this night too, in this night of his mortal eyes into which he was now descending, love and danger were again waiting... a murmur of glory and hexameters, of men defending a temple the gods will not save, and of black vessels searching the sea for a beloved isle; the murmor of the Odyssey s and Iliad s it was his destiny to sing and leave echoing concavely in the memory of man. These things we know, but not those he felt descending into the last shade of all.

The reason for their original use of the trochaic tetrameter was that their poetry was satyric and more connected with dancing than it now is. As soon, however, as a spoken part came in, nature herself found the appropriate metre. The iambic, we know, is the most speakable of metres, as is shown by the fact that we very often fall into it in conversation, whereas we rarely talk hexameters, and only when we depart from the speaking tone of voice.