Page:Goethe and Schiller's Xenions (IA goetheschillersx00goetiala).pdf/39

 monosyllables so as to make it sometimes difficult to end the verse with an unaccented (i. e., a short) syllable, but this custom has produced the impresson that the verse consists of five iambi, and among people but little versed in the rules of classical poetry who forget that an iambic meter consists of two feet, has given rise to the error that blank verse is an iambic pentameter. Strange to say this mistake is now perpetuated in almost all our text-books.

After this digression on the iambic trimeter we shall make, in conclusion, a few comments on the dactylic pentameter.

The pentameter, i. e., "a five-measure," is so called because it consists of twice two and a half dactylic meters thus:

In reality the pentameter is a repetition of a penthemimeres.

Two short syllables may always be replaced in elegiac distichs by one long syllable, with the exception of the fifth meter of the hexameter and the latter half of the