Next we turn to a piece by the persecuted and interesting Gottschalk, written in the latter part of the ninth century. A young lad has asked for a poem. But how can he sing, the exiled and imprisoned monk who might rather weep as the Jews by the waters of Babylon?[304] yet he will sing a hymn to the Trinity, and bewail his piteous lot before the highest pitying Godhead. The verses have a lyric unity of mood, and are touching with their sad refrain. Their rhyme, if not quite pure, is abundant and catching, and their nearest metrical affinity would be a trochaic dimeter. “1. Ut quid iubes, pusiole, quare mandas, filiole, carmen dulce me cantare, cum sim longe exul valde intra mare? o cur iubes canere? 2. Magis mihi, miserule, fiere libet, puerule, plus plorare quam cantare carmen tale, iubes quale, amor care, o cur iubes canere? 3. Mallem scias, pusillule, ut velles tu, fratercule, pio corde condolere mihi atque prona mente conlugere. o cur iubes canere? 4. Scis, divine tyruncule, scis, superne clientule, hic diu me exulare, multa die sive nocte tolerare. o cur iubes canere? 5. Scis captive plebicule Israheli cognomine praeceptum in Babilone decantare extra longe fines Iude. o cur iubes canere? 6. Non potuerunt utique, nec debuerunt itaque carmen dulce coram gente aliene nostri terre resonare. o cur iubes canere? 7. Sed quia vis omnimode, consodalis egregie, canam patri filioque simul atque procedente ex utroque. hoc cano ultronee. 8. Benedictus es, domine, pater, nate, paraclite, deus trine, deus une, deus summe, deus pie, deus iuste. hoc cano spontanee. 9. Exul ego diuscule hoc in mare sum, domine: annos nempe duos fere nosti fore, sed iam iamque miserere. hoc rogo humillime. 10. Interim cum pusione psallam ore, psallam mente, psallam voce (psallam corde), psallam die, psallam nocte carmen dulce tibi, rex piissime.”[305] Gottschalk (and for this it is hard to love him) was one of the initiators of the leonine hexameter, in which a syllable in the middle of the line rhymes with the last syllable. “Septeno Augustas decimo praeeunte Kalendas” is the opening hexameter in his Epistle to his friend Ratramnus.[306] To what horrid jingle such verses could attain may be seen from some leonine hexameter-pentameters of two or three hundred years later, on the Fall of Troy, beginning: “Viribus, arte, minis, Danaum clara Troja ruinis, Annis bis quinis fit rogus atque cinis.”[307]