anapaestic, trochaic, and dactylic verses, are also met with in the Modern period. Even more popular, however, are those of five-foot iambic verses, as e. g. in Dryden, pp. 393, 400, &c. Stanzas of longer verses, on the other hand, e. g. six-foot dactylic, seven-foot trochaic, iambic, or iambic-anapaestic and eight-foot trochaic verses, occur only occasionally in the more recent poets, e. g. Tennyson, Swinburne, R. Browning, D. G. Rossetti, &c. (cf. Metrik, ii, §§ 303-4).

Some other Modern English anisometrical stanzas may also be mentioned, as one in Cowley with the formula aga a in Love's Visibility (Poets, v. 273):

With much of pain, and all the art I knew
Have I endeavour'd hitherto

To hide my love, and yet all will not do.

For other forms see Metrik, ii, § 305.

§ 252. Four-lined, one-rhymed stanzas of four-foot verses (used in Low Latin, Provençal and Old French poetry, cf. Metrik, i, p. 369) are early met with in Middle English poems, as in Wright's Spec. of Lyr. Poetry, pp. 57 and 68.

The first begins with these verses, which happen to show a prevailing trochaic rhythm.

Suete iesu, king of blysse,

Myn huerte loue, min huerte lisse,

Dou art suete myd ywisse,

Wo is him þat þe shall misse.

Suete iesu, myn huerte lyht,

Pou art day withoute nyht;

Pou zeue me streinpe ant eke myht,

Forte louien pe aryht.

This simple form of stanza is also found in Modern English poetry; apparently, however, only in one of the earliest poets, viz. Wyatt (p. 36).

It occurs also in Middle English, consisting of four-stressed, rhyming-alliterative long-lines, as e. g. in Wright's Spec. of Lyr. Poetry, p. 237; and of simple four-stressed long lines in Wyatt (p. 147), and Burns (pp. 253, 265, &c.).

In Middle English poetry Septenary verses are often used in this way on the Low Latin model (cf. Metrik, i, pp. 90, 91, 370), as well as Septenary-Alexandrine verses, e. g. Wright's Spec. of Lyr. Poetry, p. 93:

Blessed be pou, leuedy, ful of heouene blisse,
Suete flur of parays, moder of mildenesse,
Preyze iesu, by sone, þat he me rede and wysse
So my wey forte gon, þat he me neuer misse.

In Modern English stanzas of this kind, consisting of Septenary verses, are of rare occurrence. We have an example in Leigh Hunt's The jovial Priest's Confession (p. 338), a translation of the well-known poem ascribed to Walter Map, Mihi est propositum in taberna mori (cf. §§ 135, 182).

Shorter verses, e. g. iambic lines of three measures, are also very rarely used for such stanzas; e. g. in Donne and Denham (Poets, iv. 48 and v. 611).

§ 253. A small group of other stanzas connected with the above may be called indivisible stanzas. They consist of a one-rhymed main part mostly of three, more rarely of two or four lines, followed by a shorter refrain-verse, a cauda, as it were, but in itself too unimportant to lend a bipartite character to the stanza. Otherwise, stanzas like these might be looked upon as bipartite unequal-membered stanzas, with which, indeed, they stand in close relationship. Three-lined stanzas of this kind occur in Modern English only; as e. g. a stanza consisting of an heroic couplet and a two-foot refrain verse of different rhythm: a a. B2 in Moore's Song :

2

Oh! where are they, who heard in former hours,
The voice of song in these neglected bowers?

They are gone-all gone!

3

Other stanzas show the formulas a a, b, and a abз. Their structure evidently is analogous to that of a four-lined Middle English stanza a aa, B3, the model of which we find in Low Latin and Provençal poetry (cf. Metrik, i. 373) and in Furnivall's Political, Religious, and Love Poems, p. 4:

Sithe god hathe chose be to be his knyzt,
And posseside pe in þi right,

Thou hime honour with al thi myght,
Edwardus Dei gracia.

Similar stanzas occur also in Modern English poets: a a a, B2 in Wyatt, p. 99, a a az B in G. Herbert, p. 18, &c. We find others with the formula a a ab2 a a ab2 in Dunbar's Inconstancy of Love, and with the formula a a aby cccb ddd bg, in Dorset (Poets,

vi. 512); there are also stanzas of five lines, e. g. aa aa В2 (Wyatt, p. 80).

2

An older poem in Ritson's Anc. Songs, i. 140 (Welcom Yol), has the same metre and form of stanza, but with a refrain verse of two measures and a two-lined refrain prefixed to the first stanza: A B a a a1 B2 cc c4 B2 A similar extended stanza is found in Wyatt (p. 108) A, bb bg Ag B2; A3 CCC3 A3 B2 There are also in modern poetry similar isometrical stanzas, as in Swinburne (Poems, ii. 108) on the scheme a a abg, cccb5, dddb, eеèƒ1⁄2, 888ƒ5, hhhf; in Campbell (p. 73) aaab, cccb, dddb; and in M. Arnold, The Second Best (p. 49), with feminine endings in the main part of the stanza, a~a~a~b1, c~c~c~ b1, d~d~d~b1, &c.

51

59

H. Bipartite unequal-membered isometrical stanzas. § 254. These are of greater number and variety. The shortest of them, however, viz. stanzas of four lines, are found only in Modern English; first of all, stanzas arranged according to the formula a aba; in this case b can be used as refrain also, as in Sidney, Astrophel and Stella, Song I (Grosart, i. 75):

Doubt you to whom my Muse these notes entendeth,
Which now my breast, surcharg'd to musick lendeth!
To you, to you, all song of praise is due,
Only in you my song begins and endeth.

Similar stanzas of four-foot iambic and of two-foot iambicanapaestic lines occur in Tennyson, The Daisy (p. 270), and in Longfellow, King Olaf and Earl Sigwald (p. 573).

Stanzas with the scheme abba also belong to this group, the two halves not being exactly equal, but only similar to each other on account of the unequal arrangement of rhymes.

Such a stanza of four-foot iambic verses occurs in an elegy of Ben Jonson's (Poets, iv. 571):

Though beauty be the mark of praise,
And yours of whom I sing be such,
As not the world can praise too much,
Yet is't your virtue now I raise.

and notably in Tennyson's In Memoriam. Both this stanza and the similar stanza of trochaic verses are found pretty often (cf. Metrik, ii, § 311).

§ 255. More frequently five-lined stanzas occur. One on the scheme abba a, similar to that just mentioned, is used

in Sidney, Psalm XXVIII; others, composed in various metres, have a one-rhymed frons or cauda, e. g. aaabb, in Wyatt, p. 128, a abbb in Moore (Still when Daylight) and other poets. Of greater importance are some stanzas on the formula a abab; they may be looked upon as isometrical tailrhyme-stanzas, shortened by one chief verse; as a aba B1, often occurring in Dunbar, e. g. in The Devil's Inquest, and in Wyatt, p. 29:

My lute awake, perform the last
Labour, that thou and I shall waste,
And end that I have now begun;
And when this song is sung and past,
My lute be still, for I have done.

Another form of this stanza, consisting of five-foot lines with refrain, occurs in Swinburne, In an Orchard (Poems, i. 116), and a variety consisting of three-foot verses is found in Drayton's Ode to Himself (Poets, iii, p. 587). More frequently this stanza is found with the two parts in inverted order (a ba a b1), as in Moore:

Take back the sigh, thy lips of art

In passion's moment breath'd to me:
Yet, no-it must not, will not part,
'Tis now the life-breath of my heart,

And has become too pure for thee.

There are also five-foot iambic and three-foot iambicanapaestic and other lines connected in this way, as in G. Herbert (p. 82); in Longfellow, Enceladus (p. 595); on the scheme abccb in Wordsworth, i. 248; and in R. Browning according to the formula a b c c b1 (vi. 77). The allied form of stanza, a abba, probably originating by inversion of the two last verses of the former stanza (a a ba b), occurs in Middle English in the poem Of the Cuckoo and the Nightingale.

The god of love,-a! benedicite,

How mighty and how greet a lord is he!
For he can make of lowe hertes hye,
And of hye lowe, and lyke for to dye,
And harde hertes he can maken free.

1 Chaucerian and other Pieces, &c., ed. Skeat, Oxford, 1897, p. 347.

The same stanza, both of four- and five-foot lines, is frequently employed by Dunbar; e. g. On his Heid-Ake, The Visitation of St. Francis, &c. We find it also in modern poets, composed of the same, or of other verses; Moore, e.g., has used it with five-foot iambic-anapaestic lines, in At the mid hour of Night.

A stanza on the model ababb is a favourite in Modern English; it is formed from the four-lined stanza (a ba b) by repeating the last rhyme. It consists of the most different kinds of verse; an example is Carew's To my inconstant Mistress (Poets, iii. 678):

When thou, poor excommunicate

From all the joys of love, shalt see
The full reward, and glorious fate,

Which my strong faith shall purchase me,
Then curse thine own inconstancy.

For other specimens in lines of five, three, and four feet see Metrik, ii. 307.

Much less common is the form ab bab, which occurs e. g. in Coleridge's Recollections of Love (ab bab).

Five-lined stanzas of crossed rhymes are not very rare; an example of the form ababa, is found in R. Browning's The Patriot (iv. 149):

It was roses, roses, all the way,

With myrtle mixed in my path like mad:

The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway,

The church-spires flamed, such flags they had,
A year ago on this very day.

For specimens of other forms see Metrik, ii, § 318.

§ 256. The simplest kind of isometrical stanzas of this group is that in which the four-lined one-rhymed stanza is extended by the addition of a couplet with a new rhyme, so that it forms a six-lined stanza. A Latin stanza of this kind consisting of Septenary verses is given in Wright's Pol. Poems, i. 253, and a Middle English imitation of it, ib. p. 268, in the poem On the Minorite Friars. The same stanza composed of four-stressed verses is used by Minot in his poem Of the batayl of Banocburn (ib. i. 61):