Henry,
The major thing to do, I think, when imitating classical hexameter in English is to end the line with a dactyl followed by a spondee or a trochee. The classical hexameter does occasionally allow fifth foot spondees; or rather, poets make use of them occasionally--Virgil much more sparingly than Catullus, for example--but that line-ending -~~-x is the most constant sound in the meter, since in each of the first four feet spondees are used probably as often as dactyls. In other words, the greater preponderance of feminine endings in the Suppiluliumas poem does make it sound more classical than the street car poem.
Tim,
I don't mean to be tepid; I like the Hope very much. It seems to me the use of the hexameter is an implicit acting-out of Eliot's dictum: "And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time." This is borne out in the ring composition on "Suppiluliumas." In any event, I think the meter works very well here, (though it might grow tiresome extended to 24 books, in a translation of Homer, say); & the last stanza is thrilling, especially the "perpetual Pentecost."
Jody,
No, no, I like Heraclitus too, though it's always been my feeling that they're both saying largely the same thing, though from different perspectives; Parmenides from the divine, Heraclitus from the human. But I'm largely interested in Parmenides now because he wrote in verse & has that cool proem with its blazing Chariot of Being & all. It may be true that kids like him better than old men; but Nietzsche was rather young when he wrote about the PreSocratics, & he greatly preferred Heraclitus. This is what he said about Parmenides:
Quote:
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One's sympathy toward phenomena atrophies; one even develops a hatred for being unable to get rid of the everlasting deceitfulness of sensation. Henceforward truth shall lie only in the palest, most abstracted husks of the most indefinite terms, as though in a house of cobwebs. And beside such truth now sits our philosopher, likewise as bloodless as his abstractions, in the spun out fabric of his formulas. A spider at least wants blood from its victims. The Parmenidean philosopher hates most of all the blood of his victims, the blood of the empirical reality which was sacrificed and shed by him.
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I quote that because I rather like it; it's very dramatic.
Chris