A _rhythmus_ of uncertain date is most plausibly assigned to tenth-century Verona.[23] O Roma nobilis, orbis et domina, Cunctarum urbium excellentissima, Roseo martyrum sanguine rubea Albis et virginum liliis candida, Salutem dicimus tibi per omnia, Te benedicimus, salve per sæcula. Petre, tu præpotens cælorum claviger, Vota precantium exaudi iugiter; Cum bis sex tribuum sederis arbiter, Factus placabilis iudica leniter Teque petentibus nunc temporaliter Ferto suffragia misericorditer. O Paule, suscipe nostra precamina, Cuius philosophos vicit industria; Factus œconomus in domo regia Divini muneris adpone fercula, Ut, quæ repleverit te, sapientia Ipsa nos repleat tua per dogmata. AH 51: 219. To read this as a rhythmical senarius disregards not only many quantities, as might be expected, but also many word-accents. The measure of the hymn just above is suggested by the doubly dactylic close and the generally long and stressed opening. But so to render it is again to violate many word-accents, including almost all those of the characteristic second foot. The word-accent is generally kept by rendering: Ó Roma nóbilis, órbis et dómina.[24] It is hard not to think that at least the final rhythmical dactyls were in the composer’s mind. If so, we have rhythmical dactyls not only as occasional substitutions, but as constituent; and the easiest rendering makes them constitute the whole measure. Carolingian hymn-writers ranged in art all the way from the expert and fluent metrist Sedulius Scotus to the undisciplined Gottschalk,[25] who would write twelve stanzas on a single rime such as _Christe, mearum | Lux tenebrarum_,[26] or _Spes mea, Christe, | Rex benedicte_.[27] Thus he rimes even Sapphics. With much diffuseness and jingle he has sometimes a lyric appeal that forecasts the more sentimental hymns of later centuries, and is as far from the gravity of the elder habit. Hymnody is typically communal and popular. Such poetic opportunities inspired and authorized in the Carolingian period some verse more valid as devotion than as poetry. Here and there manuscripts have preserved local commemorations which make little pretense beyond grateful mnemonic. But hymns of higher achievement show that the new Latin verse given by the Church to the last days of the Empire was appreciated and carried forward as poetry; and the rhythmical adaptations of measures not used before evince an active, and often an expert, poetic. 3. NARRATIVE HEXAMETERS AND ELEGIACS But the characteristic verse of the period is hexameter or elegiac. Thus Theodulf composed even the familiar Palm Sunday hymn. Gloria, laus et honor tibi sit, rex Christe redemptor, Cui puerile decus prompsit osanna pium.... MGH _Poet. lat. Carol._ I. 558.