Slumb’rer! thine | early bier
      Friends should | have crown’d,
    Many a |flow’r and tear
      Shedding | around.

    Soft voices, | dear and young,
      Mingling | their swell,
    Should o’er thy | dust have sung
      Earth’s last | farewell.

    Sisters a |-bove the grave
      Of thy | repose
    Should have bid | vi’lets wave
      With the | white rose.

    Now must the | trumpet’s note. 
      Savage | and shrill,
    For requi’m | o’er thee float,
      Thou fair | and still!

    And the swift | charger sweep,
      In full | career,
    Trampling thy | place of sleep—­
      Why cam’st | thou here?

    Why?—­Ask the | true heart why
      Woman | hath been
    Ever, where | brave men die,
      Unshrink |-ing seen.

    Unto this | harvest ground,
      Proud reap |-ers came,
    Some for that | stirring sound,
      A warr |-ior’s name: 

    Some for the | stormy play,
      And joy | of strife,
    And some to | fling away
      A wea |-ry life.

    But thou, pale | sleeper, thou,
      With the | slight frame,
    And the rich | locks, whose glow
      Death can |-not tame;

    Only one | thought, one pow’r,
     Thee could | have led,
    So through the | tempest’s hour
     To lift | thy head!

    Only the | true, the strong,
     The love | whose trust
    Woman’s deep | soul too long
     Pours on | the dust.”

    HEMANS:  Poetical Works, Vol. ii, p. 157.

Here are fourteen stanzas of composite dimeter, each having two sorts of lines; the first sort consisting, with a few exceptions, of a dactyl and an amphimac; the second, mostly, of two iambs; but, in some instances, of a trochee and an iamb;—­the latter being, in such a connexion, much the more harmonious and agreeable combination of quantities.

Example IV.—­Airs from a “Serenata."

    Air 1.

    “Love sounds | the alarm,
      And fear | is a-fly~ing;
    When beau |-ty’s the prize,
      What mor |-tal fears dy |-ing? 
    In defence | of my treas |-ure,
      I’d bleed | at each vein;
    Without | her no pleas |-ure;
      For life | is a pain.”

    Air 2.

    “Consid |-er, fond shep |-h~erd,
      How fleet |-ing’s the pleas |-ure,
    That flat |-ters our hopes
      In pursuit | of the fair: 
    The joys | that attend | it,
      By mo |-ments we meas |-ure;
    But life | is too lit |-tle
      To meas |-ure our care.”

       GAY’S POEMS:  Johnson’s Works of the Poets, VoL vii, p. 378.

These verses are essentially either anapestic or amphibrachic.  The anapest divides two of them in the middle; the amphibrach will so divide eight.  But either division will give many iambs.  By the present scansion, the first foot is an iamb in all of them but the two anapestics.