And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring.
Let them smile as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling.

--Holmes.

3.

The upper air burst into life;
And a hundred fire flags sheen,
To and fro they were hurried about;
And to and fro, and in and out,
The wan stars danced between.

--Coleridge.

The Spenserian stanza consists of nine lines: the first eight are iambic
pentameters, and the last line is an iambic hexameter or Alexandrine.
Burns makes use of this stanza in _The Cotter's Saturday Night._ The
following stanza from that poem shows the plan of the rhymes:--

O Scotia! my dear, my native soil!
For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent!
Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil
Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content!
And oh! may Heaven their simple lives prevent
From luxury's contagion, weak and vile!
Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent,
A virtuous populace may rise the while,
And stand a wall of fire around their much beloved isle.

EXERCISES

_A._ Scan the following:--

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.

--Wordsworth.

Into the sunshine,
Full of light,
Leaping and flashing
From morn to night!

--Lowell.

_B._ Name each verse in the following stanza:--

Hear the sledges with the bells--
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight--
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells--
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

--Poe.

+117. Kinds of Poetry.+-There are three general classes of poetry:
narrative, lyric, and dramatic.

_A. Narrative poetry_, as may be inferred from its name, relates events
which may be either real or imaginary. Its chief varieties are the epic,
the metrical romance or lesser epic, the tale, and the ballad.

_An epic_ poem is an extended narrative of an elevated character that
deals with heroic exploits