An example of a blunt line becoming pendant in catalexis is Goethe's poem Heidenröslein,[2] or, in the same metre, the English carol Good King Wenceslas: Another example[2] is the children's song Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush, of which the first stanza ends as follows: In all of these songs, when they are set to music, there is a lengthening of the penultimate syllable in order to equalise the two lines.
[2] When a poem is doubly catalectic (brachycatalectic), that is, shortened by two syllables, a blunt ending remains blunt: In languages which use quantitative metres, such as Latin, Ancient Greek, Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit, the final syllable of any line is anceps, that is, indifferently long or short.
According to one view dating back to ancient times, even if the final syllable is prosodically short, it counts as long because of the pause which follows it (see brevis in longo).
The first line of the Bhagavad Gita scans as follows: whereas the mandākrāntā metre is as follows: A similar phenomenon is also found in classical Persian.
[8] In classical verse, the final syllable of a line always counted as long, so that if a dactyl ( – u u ) is made catalectic, it becomes a spondee ( – – ).
He changed the meter in one long scene in Misanthrope to a 15-syllable catalectic iambic tetrameter recited to an aulos accompaniment.
[12] Venantius Fortunatus' hymn Pange lingua is in trochaic tetrameter catalectic—the meter of the marching chants of the Roman armies.