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MIXED METRES.
61
Fortune, honour, beauty, youth, are but blossoms dying; Wanton pleasure, doting love, are but shadows flying. All our joys are but toys,
Idle thoughts deceiving; None hath power of an hour, In their live bereiving.
In every combination there should be a design of producing some effect; to introduce a combina­tion without any design is a mark of carelessness, or lack of patience and resource. The effect designed may be merely to please, by a change of the measure, for the sake of variety; but the change is made more properly when it is done to accommodate the verse to the sentiments; to express, for example, what is grave by a suitable kind, as the iambic; what is sprightly by the trochaic, and the like. Gray, in his ode on the Pro­gress of Poesy, has produced a very striking and happy effect by such a combination of verses; the tripping measure which represents the frisky dance of the Cupids, is finely contrasted with the smooth iambic which describes the gentle gait of Venus.
A disagreeable and jarring effect would be pro­duced if they were made contrariwise to this, i.e.