Thousand | banners | round him | burn. 
    Where he | points his | purple | spear,
    Hasty, | hasty | rout is | there,
    Marking | with in | -dignant | eye
    Fear to | stop, and | shame to | fly. 
    There Con | -fusion, | Terror’s | child,
    Conflict | fierce, and | Ruin | wild,
    Ago | -ny, that | pants for | breath,
    Despair, | and HON | -OURA | -BLE DEATH.” 
        THOMAS GRAY:  Johnson’s British Poets, Vol. vii, p. 285.

Example XIII.—­“Grongar Hill.”—­First Twenty-six Lines.

“Silent | Nymph, with | curious | eye, Who, the | purple | eve, dost | lie On the | mountain’s | lonely | van, Beyond | the noise | of bus | _-y man_; Painting | fair the | form of | things, While the | yellow | linnet | sings; Or the | tuneful | nightin | -gale Charms the | forest | with her | tale; Come, with | all thy | various hues, Come, and | aid thy | sister | Muse.  Now, while | Phoebus, | riding | high, Gives lus | _-tre to_ | the land | and sky, Grongar | Hill in | -vites my | song; Draw the | landscape | bright | and strong; Grongar, | in whose | mossy | cells, Sweetly | -musing | Quiet | dwells; Grongar, | in whose | silent | shade, For the | modest | Muses | made, So oft | I have, | the eve | _-ning still_, At the | fountain | of a | rill, Sat up | -on a | flowery | bed, With my | hand be | -neath my | head, While stray’d | my eyes | o’er Tow | _-y’s flood_, Over | mead and | over wood, From house | to house, | from hill | to hill, Till Con | _-templa_ | _-tion had_ | her fill.” 
    JOHN DYER:  Johnson’s British Poets, Vol. vii, p. 65.

OBSERVATIONS.

OBS. 1.—­This is the most common of our trochaic measures; and it seems to be equally popular, whether written with single rhyme, or with double; in stanzas, or in couplets; alone, or with some intentional intermixture.  By a careful choice of words and style, it may be adapted to all sorts of subjects, grave, or gay; quaint, or pathetic; as may the corresponding iambic metre, with which it is often more or less mingled, as we see in some of the examples above.  Milton’s L’Allegro, or Gay Mood, has one hundred and fifty-two lines; ninety-eight of which are iambics; fifty-four trochaic tetrameters; a very few of each order having double rhymes.  These orders the poet has not—­“very ingeniously alternated” as Everett avers; but has simply interspersed, or commingled, with little or no regard to alternation.  His Il Penseroso, or Grave Mood, has twenty-seven trochaic tetrameters, mixed irregularly with one hundred and forty-nine iambics.