The heavenly Jerusalem has never been contrasted with the cities of the perverted present more eloquently. For Bernard’s achievement of style is rather in the ample realizations of eloquence than in poetic compression. The poetic distinction is in the verse. The sheer technical mastery of insistently rimed stress rhythm shows the possibilities of the verse habit of his time. Hora novissima, tempora pessima sunt; vigilemus. Ecce minaciter imminet arbiter, ille supremus. Thus the poem begins; and the cento made from it is often entitled[49] _Hora novissima_. Accentual hexameters rimed within—the Leonine system carried a step further—are rimed together as couplets. They are entirely dactylic except in the last foot; the typical ancient variation by spondee within the line is never used. Finally they are divided into three staves of two beats each, thus foregoing another ancient variation, the shift of cæsura. The first two staves of each line rime together; the last rimes with the last stave of the next line. The pattern could hardly be more marked. Yet the drumming dactyls, the insistent rime, are kept in movement; they do not stall even when the weaving of the line becomes sheer virtuosity. Pax ea pax rata, pax superis data, danda modestis. Bernard demonstrated that even insistently rimed stress rhythm could be kept from jar and jingle by attending constantly to movement. For this he exhibited further the capacity of accentual dactyls. More generally he displayed with great technical skill the range and flexibility of rhythm always chiming with word-accent, that is always answering the habit of speech. The currency of rimed stress verse is obvious in student songs and other jocular and satirical poems known generically as Goliardic.[50] A little satire on masters and bachelors of arts, assigned to the eleventh century, is typical of the ease with which such verse could be turned. Jam fit magister artium Qui nescit quotas partium De vero fundamento. Habere nomen appetit, Rem vero nec curat nec scit, Examine contento. Jam fiunt baccalaurii Pro munere denarii Quamplures idiotæ. In artibus ab aliis Egregiis scientiis Sunt bestiæ promotæ. E. du Méril, _Poésies populaires du moyen âge_, Paris, 1847, page 153. Of the numerous twelfth- and thirteenth-century poems of this sort, many of which have been repeated ever since, none is more famous than the drinking song once attributed to Walter Map. Mihi est propositum in taberna mori. Vinum sit appositum morientis ori, Ut dicant cum venerint angelorum chori: Deus sit propitius huic potatori.... Du Méril, 205. 2. Variations in Trochaic Stanza