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Panegyrics as well as comic songs appear to have been uniformly sung in Saturnian metre, of course to the pipe, and presumably in such a way that the -caesura- in particular in each line was strongly marked; and in alternate singing the second singer probably took up the verse at this point.
The freedom of cadence, the varied caesura, and the licences in the first foot, give the charm of irregular beauty, so sweet in itself and so rare in Latin poetry; and the rhythm lends itself with equal ease to playful humour, fierce satire, and tender affection.
"Si plura nitent in carmine, non ego paucis Offendar maculis, quas aut incuria fudit, Aut humana parum cavit natura." You may please also to observe that there is not, to the best of my remembrance, one vowel gaping on another for want of a caesura in this whole poem.
The poem is thus a document of great importance in the history of the development of mediaeval out of classical poetry. Though not, of course, without his barbarisms, Commodianus was obviously neither ignorant nor careless of the rules of classical versification, some of which for instance, the strong caesura in the middle of the third foot he retains with great strictness.
Like the knocking at the door in Macbeth, or the cry of the watchman in the Tour de Nesle, they show that the horrible caesura is over and the nightmares have fled away, because the day is breaking and the ordinary life of men is beginning to bestir itself among the streets.
It was in some hundreds of verses, which I did my best to balance as Pope did, with a caesura falling in the middle of the line, and a neat antithesis at the end.
In humorous verse, especially, rhyme plays an effective part; and in all verse, alliteration, variations in melody, the lighter and the heavier touch, acceleration and retard in movement, the caesura, or pause in the line, and the happy effect of the occasional cadence, are features which one can come to appreciate and respect only with reading one's favorite poems many times, with spirit warm, with faculties alert.
The direct derivation from Otfrid seems, however, the most plausible, as it accounts for the importance of the caesura, which generally marks a pause in the sense, as well as in the verse, and also for its masculine ending. The "Nibelungen" strophe consists of four long lines separated by a caesura into two distinct halves.
North-west the range had a rich white glow, as if shining to the moon, and westward, streams of amber, melting into upper rose, shot out from the dipping disk. "What Sandoe calls the passion-flower of heaven," said Richard under his breath to Adrian, who was serenely chanting Greek hexameters, and answered, in the swing of the caesura, "He might as well have said cauliflower."
Hugo had perhaps ventured to place the pause between the adjective and its noun, but it was not until Banville wrote the line, "Elle filait pensivement la blanche laine" that the caesura received its final coup de grâce. This verse has been probably more imitated than any other verse in the French language.
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