It's an odd thing, but some hexameters, a few,
sound like pentameters at first hearing. No
practiced poet who composed, say, a line like
"Suddenly I saw the cold and rook-delighting
heaven" would fail to realize that it's a hex-
ameter, but if memory serves, I didn't immediately
catch Frost's opening line as one (although it
didn't take long). (I know I've written quite a
few which were meant to be pentameters.) Later on
in Frost's great poem, there's another hexameter
even less audible than the first line; I knew the
poem by heart for years before it hit me that
"Harold's associated in his mind with Latin" is
a hexameter. (I know that Frost consciously used
occasional six-beat and four-beat lines in his
blank verse, but I wonder if he heard that one.)
[This message has been edited by robert mezey (edited July 07, 2001).]
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