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That script is three lines of verse, two in dactylic hexameter, the metre of epic verse.

It is said that Meechan’s fellow satirist, Juvenal, issued a similar warning to ancient Greek critics, infuriated by his cavalier use of the dactylic hexameter, in the second century AD.

There were monkeypods, “planted as seedlings no taller than chives,” as Mr. Merwin wrote, in impeccable dactylic tetrameter, in an essay in “What Is a Garden?,” which centers on his work in Hawaii.

As such, it’s particularly difficult to adapt to dactylic hexameter, the waltzlike, oom-pah-pah meter of epic poetry, which the Romans inherited from the Greeks.

The next example is three lines of dactylic hexameter scratched onto a drinking cup: “I am Nestor’s delicious drinking cup. Whoever drinks from this cup swiftly will the desire of fair-crowned Aphrodite seize him.”