Page:Goethe and Schiller's Xenions (IA goetheschillersx00goetiala).pdf/40

 pentameter. The schedule of a distich, accordingly, is thus:

[**metric: — — — — —   — -uu-uu-uu-uu-uu-uu-u

— — -uu-uu-||-uu-uu-]

Considering the fact that the measures of Greek prosody are comparable to musical bars in which time and not accent is the decisive element, we readily understand that the name "pentameter" is a misnomer, for the pentameter consists as much as the hexameter of six full dactylic bars, only that there is a pause of one-half meter after each two and a half meters. Expressed in musical characters, the distich reads as follows: