Page:The seven great hymns of the mediaeval church - 1902.djvu/32

2 There till survive of his writings five poems, the greatet of which is De Contemptu Mundi. It was written about 1145, and contains three thouand lines, divided into three books. In ubtance the poem is a atire, unforgiving and evere: in form it is in dacylic hexameter vere. According to Dr. Duffield, to whoe judgment I defer, "each line conits of a firt part compoed of two dactyls, a econd containing two more dactyls, and a third made up of a dactyl and a trochee. The lat dactyls of the firt and second parts rhyme together, and the lines are in couplets—the final trochees alo rhyming. This remark upon the dactylic nature of the rhymes in the firt two parts is not made by Neale or Coles or the compiler of the Seven Great Hymns. They all italicie the lat two yllables, whereas it hould be the lat three, i. e., the foot itself.

is in all repects a perfect line—each foot being a word, and the rhyme unimpeachable." [sic]