Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/218

, connected also always with the alliterative and syllabic rhymes. Thus:—

Nu er hersis hefnd,

Vid hilmi efnd.

Gengr ulfr ok ærn

Af ynglings bærn."

The two lines only rhyme together, in Icelandic versification, which are connected by the rules of alliterative verse,—viz. the first and second, and the third and fourth; but the first and third, or second and fourth, are never made to rhyme together. Longer verse-lines than of eight syllables are not used, and lines of three or six appear more common. A short measure, admitting of no pause or caesura in the middle of the line, appears to have been most agreeable to the Icelandic ear, or mode of recitative in which the scalds have chanted their verses. These observations are taken from Rash's a Yeiledning til det Islandske Sprog, 1811;" in which there is a valuable dissertation on the Icelandic versification, with examples of the different kinds of verses. Some later Icelandic scholars are of opinion that what Rask has treated as two lines, on the supposition that the Icelandic versification had no cæsura, had in reality been one line, with the caesura marked by a rhyme corre sponding to the end-rhyme of the fine, which middle rhyme is of common occurrence in old English verses. For example, in the following old English verses on the Bee, the line is not concluded at the rhyme in the middle, which marks a strong caesura or pause, not a total want of it:—

"In winter daies, when Phoæbus' raies

Are hid with misty cloud,

And stormy showers assault her bowers,

And cause her for to crowd."

Baret's Alvearia, 1580.

And also in the Latin rhymes of the monks in the middle ages, as, for instance in these,