“Glad was our | meeting:  thy | glittering | bosom I | heard,
Beating on | mine, like the | heart of a | timorous | bird;
Bright were thine | eyes as the | stars, and their | glances were
| radiant as | gleams
Falling from | eyes of the | angels, when | singing by | Eden’s pur
|-pureal | streams.

“Happy as | seraphs were | we, for we | wander’d a | -lone,
Trembling with | passionate | thrills, when the | twilight had
| flown: 
Even the | echo was | silent:  our | kisses and | whispers of | love
Languish’d un | -heard and un | -known, like the | breath of the
| blossoming | buds of the | grove.

“Life hath its | pleasures, but | fading are | they as the | flowers;
Sin hath its | sorrows, and | sadly we | turn’d from those | bowers;
Bright were the | angels be | -hind with their | falchions of
| heavenly | flame!
Dark was the | desolate | desert be | -fore us, and | darker the
| depth of our | shame!”
—­HENRY B. HIRST:  Hart’s English Grammar, p. 190.

OBS. 6.—­Of Dactylic verse, our prosodists and grammarians in general have taken but very little notice; a majority of them appearing by their silence, to have been utterly ignorant of the whole species.  By many, the dactyl is expressly set down as an inferior foot, which they imagine is used only for the occasional diversification of an iambic, trochaic, or anapestic line.  Thus Everett:  “It is never used except as a secondary foot, and then in the first place of the line.”—­English Versification, p. 122.  On this order of verse, Lindley Murray bestowed only the following words:  “The DACTYLIC measure being very uncommon, we shall give only one example of one species of it:—­

    Fr=om th~e l~ow pl=eas~ures of th=is fall~en n=at~ure,
    Rise we to higher, &c.”—­Gram., 12mo, p. 207; 8vo, p. 257.

Read this example with "we rise" for "Rise we," and all the poetry of it is gone!  Humphrey says, “Dactyle verse is seldom used, as remarked heretofore; but is used occasionally, and has three metres; viz. of 2, 3, and 4 feet.  Specimens follow. 2 feet.  Free from anxiety. 3 feet.  Singing most sweetly and merrily. 4 feet.  Dactylic measures are wanting in energy.”—­English Prosody, p. 18.  Here the prosodist has made his own examples; and the last one, which unjustly impeaches all dactylics, he has made very badly—­very prosaically; for the word “Dactylic,” though it has three syllables, is properly no dactyl, but rather an amphibrach.

OBS. 7.—­By the Rev. David Blair, this order of poetic numbers is utterly misconceived and misrepresented.  He says of it, “DACTYLIC verse consists of a short syllable, with one, two, or three feet, and a long syllable; as,

    ’D~istr=act~ed w~ith w=oe,
    ‘I’ll r=ush on the f=oe.’  ADDISON.”—­Blair’s Pract.  Gram., p. 119.