370. He is gone, etc. As Taylor remarks, the metre of this dirge seems to be amphibrachic; that is, made up of feet, or metrical divisions, of three syllables, the second of which is accented. Some of the lines appear to be anapestic (made up of trisyllabic feet, with the last syllable accented); but the rhythm of these is amphibrachic; that is, the rhythmic pause is after the syllable that follows the accent. "(He) is gone on | the mountain, {Like) a summer- | dried fountain." Ten lines out of twenty-four are distinctly amphibrachic, as "To Duncan | no morrow." So that it seems best to treat the rest as amphibrachic, with a superfluous unaccented syllable at the beginning of the line. Taylor adds: "The song is very carefully divided. To each of the three things, mountain, forest, fountain, four lines are given, in the order 3, 1, 2."
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