Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/284

 266 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. of the change from quantity to accent within the same form of verse. The hymns of Ambrose rest altogether upon quantity and ignore the accent, which frequently falls on short syllables, and is in apparent conflict with the stress and movement of the verse. The next step is the retention of quantity combined with an attempt to observe the accent; i.e. to make the syllables which are long by nature or position coincide with the tonic accent of the words.^ This stage is reached by the alphabetic hymn to Christ of Sedulius (circ. 450), in which, moreover, rhyme has become an element of the verse.^ It is also noticeable that as this iambic dimeter changes to accent and acquires rhyme, the poems written in it contain more Christian emotion; with the disintegration of metre the emotional expression of the dawning Middle Ages is loosed. As an illustration of this, the Deus Creator omnium of Ambrose may be compared with a some- what later hymn showing the beginnings of rhyme, and irregularities of metre through the encroachment of accent upon quantity. Deus creator omnium • Polique rector^ vestiens Diem decoro lumine, Noctem soporis gratia, — 1 A tendency in this direction appears in the hexameters of two fifth-century pagan poets, the one writing in Greek, the other in Latin, Nonnos and Claudian. See Bouvy, Poetes et M^lodes, pp. 144-149. 2 Printed in Clement, Carmina, etc., p. 175, and in Du Meril, Poesies Populaires, and in Humer's edition of Sedulius. It is com- X>osed of twenty-three four-line verses, beginning with the suc- cessive letters of the alphabet, and telling the important facts of the Saviour's life.