Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/303

 IX] TRANSITION TO MEDIAEVAL POETRY 285 oped strikingly. Of the old metres, the hexameter, the elegiac, and the sapphic did not lend themselves readily to the change from quantity to accent. Though continuing in rude use in mediaeval Latin poetry, they did not become a medium for the evolution of accent- ual verse forms. On the other hand, the simple iam- bic and trochaic metres readily passed through the change and emerged from it to new life as accentual verse, with the added element of rhyme.^ From this accentual and rhymed verse novel verse-forms were developed with more impressive rhymes. This poetry reached its zenith in the hymns of Adam St. Victor and other great hymn writers of the twelfth century.' Latin hymns composed through the twelfth and thir- teenth centuries still constitute living verse, though life had departed from other forms of poetry in Latin, and was flowering in the lyric and narrative poetry of the Teutonic and Romance tongues.' 1 See ante, p. 265. A collection like that of E. du M^ril, Poesies popidaires latines, shows how the life of Latin poetry passes into accentual rhymed verses formed from these metres, and does not remain in the metrical poetry. The Waltharius is an exception to this rule. It was composed in hexameters hy Ekkehard I, abbot of St. Gall (d.973), and rewritten by Ekkehard IV between 1021 and 1031. The substance of this famous poem was Teutonic legend, and Ekkehard composed it in hexameters apparently as a school exercise (Ebert, Allge. Ges., Ill, p. 266). It is one of the most spir- ited pieces of medieval narrative poetry. 3 There was in the Middle Ages a mass of popular Latin songs which frequently reflect or parody the versification and phraseology of Latin hymns. These Carmina Burana, or Goliardic poems, as they are called, have life and sometimes beauty, and like the hymns are characterized by effective rhymes. • The verse forms of the Romance tongaes, with their assonance and rhyme, came from Latin accentual verse. Early Teutonic