Horatian Metre (An)

Book i. Ode iv. In alternate lines, one of seventeen syllables and the other of eleven, thus:

Below is a translation of the first four lines in this Horatian metre (rhyming):

Now that the winter is past, blithe spring to the balmy fields inviteth,

And lo! from the dry sands men their keels are hauling;

Cattle no longer their stalls affect, nor the hind his hearth delighteth,

Nor deadly Frost spreads over meads her palling.

E. C. B.

⁂ See Alcaic, Asclepiadic, Choriambic, Sapphic, etc. (See also Hexameters, and Hexameters and Pentameters.)

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.