Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 2.djvu/211

199 canam patri filioque simul atque procedente ex utroque. hoc cano ultronee.

Benedictus es, domine, pater, nate, paraclite, deus trine, deus une, deus summe, deus pie, deus iuste. hoc cano spontanee.

Exul ego diuscule hoc in mare sum, domine: annos nempe duos fere nosti fore, sed iam iamque miserere, hoc rogo humillime.

Interim cum pusione psallam ore, psallam mente, psallam voce (psallam corde), psallam die, psallam nocte carmen dulce tibi, rex piissime."

Gottschalk (and for this it is hard to love him) was one of the initiators of the leonine hexameter, in which a syllable in the middle of the line rhymes with the last syllable.

is the opening hexameter in his Epistle to his friend Ratramnus. To what horrid jingle such verses could attain may be seen from some leonine hexameter-pentameters of two or three hundred years later, on the Fall of Troy, beginning: Viribus, arte, minis, Danaum clara Troja ruinis,
 * Annis bis quinis fit rogus atque cinis."