It is interesting, from a metrical point of view, to compare Chaucer's couplets with Dryden's where he is translating Chaucer, e. g., in the Knight's Tale and Palamon and Arcite.

Between 1664 and 1678 it became the fashion, partly as a reaction against the liberties of the late Elizabethan blank verse, and partly under French influence, to write drama in heroic couplets. But the undertaking soon proved abortive.

Pope's couplets represent the acme of polish and metrical dexterity—a perfect instrument for wit and satire.[51] Thus in the mock-heroic Rape of the Lock these well-modeled couplets prove their mettle, but in the translation of Homer their fatal limitations are easily apparent.

The departure from the petrified couplet was gradual and natural, and influenced greatly by the simpler language and content of the verses. These two specimens show Goldsmith writing in two manners, only a few lines apart. Still freer are Cowper's couplets in his On the Receipt of My Mother's Picture. Byron in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809) and Crabbe in his earlier work, still practised the eighteenth-century couplet (in the Tales of the Hall, 1819, Crabbe varied it to a considerable degree), but the new spirit of the Romantic Movement leavened all the metrical forms, as it did the themes, of poetry. Compare the following examples.

Three-Line Stanza

Stanzas of three lines riming aaa (called tercets or triplets) are not very common. Familiar, however, is Herrick's Upon Julia's Clothes:

Other examples are: Threnos (in The Phœnix and the Turtle), Herbert's Trinity Sunday, Quarles' Shortness of Life, Browning's A Toccata of Galuppi's, Tennyson's The Two Voices, Swinburne's After a Reading, and Clear the Way; and (with a simple refrain) Cowper's To Mary:

Crashaw's Wishes to his Supposed Mistress rimes a²a³a⁴.

Tennyson's 'O Swallow, Swallow' in The Princess is in unrimed triplets.

On the terza rima see below, page 164.

Four-Line Stanza: Quatrain

The most important quatrains are the ballad stanza, riming a⁴b³c⁴b³ or a⁴b³a⁴b³ (the Common Measure of the hymnals), with the related Long Measure riming abab⁴ or abcb⁴; the In Memoriam stanza abba⁴; and the elegiac quatrain abab⁵. These are often combined into 8-and 12-line stanzas, as abab bcbc⁵ (called the Monk's Tale stanza), abab cdcd, etc., sometimes with alternating long and short lines. And these, as well as longer stanzas, are frequently varied by the use of repetitions and refrains.[52]

The ballad stanza, with its frequent variations of internal rime and additional verses is excellently illustrated by Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. Similar is Tennyson's Sir Galahad, a 12-line stanza of three quatrains, a⁴b³a⁴b³cdc⁴d³efgf⁴. Another common variation is that of Hood's The Dream of Eugene Aram, Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol, and Rossetti's Blessed Damozel, a⁴b³c⁴b³d⁴b³. The musical roughness of the old ballads should be contrasted with the regularized modern imitations, such as Longfellow's Wreck of the Hesperus. Better imitations are Rossetti's Stratton Water and The King's Tragedy, Robert Buchanan's Judas Iscariot, and W.B. Yeats's Father Gilligan. Sometimes a shorter quatrain is printed as a long couplet and combined into larger stanzas, as in Mr. Alfred Noyes's The Highwayman (which has an additional variation in the inserted fourth and fifth lines):

The variations in Tennyson's The Revenge should be carefully studied.

The ballad stanza is closely similar to the abab⁴ and abcb⁴ quatrains, and (as in the Sir Galahad mentioned just above) the two are sometimes united. All three were much used by Wordsworth and many minor poets for lyrics as well as narratives; the result is often an undignified tinkle that takes the popular ear and "makes the judicious grieve." The stanzaic unit is so easily carried in one's mind and so rapidly repeats itself, that there is little opportunity for the necessary pleasing surprises. But that the measure is capable of a simple expressive music is evident from such examples as Wordsworth's 'Lucy' poems. These stanzas, both alone and doubled (as in To Mary in Heaven), were favorites with Burns.

A striking musical effect was obtained by Swinburne in Dolores by shortening the last line of a double quatrain:

Similar interesting variations are Coleridge's Love, aba⁴b³ and Wordsworth's The Solitary Reaper.

The In Memoriam stanza (abba⁴) is named after Tennyson's poem (though that was by no means its first use), because Tennyson gave it a peculiar melody, and, partly for this reason and partly from the length and subject of the poem, almost preëmpted it for elegiac purposes.[53] Characteristic stanzas metrically are these:

One of the peculiarities of the stanza is the increased emphasis which the rime of the third verse receives from its proximity to that of the second; and this is noticeable both when there is a logical pause after the third verse and when there is none:

Run-on stanzas are very frequent; especially remarkable is the periodic movement of the four stanzas of LXXXVI, leading up to the last line—

"By the rhyme-scheme of the quatrain," says Corson, "the terminal rhyme-emphasis of the stanza is reduced, the second and third verses being the most closely braced by the rhyme. The stanza is thus admirably adapted to the sweet continuity of flow, free from abrupt checks, demanded by the spiritualized sorrow which it bears along. Alternate rhyme would have wrought an entire change in the tone of the poem. To be assured of this, one should read, aloud, of course, all the stanzas whose first and second, or third and fourth, verses admit of being transposed without affecting the sense. By such transposition, the rhymes are made alternate, and the concluding rhymes more emphatic. There are as many as ninety-one such stanzas.... The poem could not have laid hold of so many hearts as it has, had the rhymes been alternate, even if the thought-element had been the same."[54] Examples for this experiment are:

Compare the slightly different effect of the same stanza printed as two lines, in Wilde's The Sphinx:

The name 'elegiac stanza' for the abab⁵ quatrain comes apparently from its appropriate use by Gray in the Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, but it is not altogether fitting; for it is simply the quatrain movement of the English sonnet, where no lament is intended, and it was employed effectively by Dryden in his Annus Mirabilis, and has been often employed since, without elegiac feeling. For examples see the stanza from Gray, page 55, and the sonnets on pages 129 f. An especially interesting modification is that of Tennyson's Palace of Art, a⁵b⁴a⁵b³.

Five-Line Stanza

Five-line stanzas are formed in various ways, e. g., aaaba, aabba, aabab, abbba, ababa, ababb, etc., in lines of three, four, five, etc., stresses.

Six-Line Stanza

Six-line stanzas are formed by similar combinations; the most frequent is the quatrain + couplet, called, from Shakespeare's poem, the Venus and Adonis stanza, ababcc⁵ (compare the end of the English sonnet and the ottava rima).[55] Familiar examples are Wordsworth's To a Skylark and his fine Laodamia.

The same rimes with 4-stress verses are also common,[56] for example, Wordsworth's

Another important 6-line stanza is the tail-rime or rime couée, a stanza much used in the Middle English romances and chosen by Chaucer for his parody, Sir Thopas. Harry Bailey, mine host of the Canterbury pilgrims, called it 'doggerel rime.' The simple and probably normal form is aa⁴b³cc⁴b³ or aa⁴b³aa⁴b³, which to save space in the manuscripts was written thus:

Variations are extremely common: the aaa⁴b²ccc⁴b² of Wordsworth's To the Daisy, aaaa⁴b²ccc⁴b³ of Tennyson's Lady of Shalott, aa³b²ccc³b² of S. F. Smith's America, aaa³b²ccc³b² of Drayton's Agincourt, and the so-called Burns stanza, in which Burns wrote some fifty poems, aaa⁴b²a⁴b², e. g., To a Mouse and Address to the Deil.

Seven-Line Stanza

The most important 7-line stanza is the rime royale or Chaucer (or Troilus) stanza, ababbcc⁵. In the Parlement of Foules, the Man of Law's Tale, and Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer made it a splendid vehicle both for narrative and for reflective analysis, for humor, satire, description, and all the gamut of emotions; in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries James I, Lydgate and Hoccleve, Henryson and Dunbar, and Skelton, Hawes and Barclay employed it, largely in imitation of Chaucer; Wyatt used it in his Vixi Puellis Nuper Idoneus; and Shakespeare in The Rape of Lucrece. Since then it has not proved attractive to the poets—though no reason for its disuse is obvious—except Wordsworth (in his translations of Chaucer) and Morris, Chaucer's latest disciple.

In comparison with the formality of Shakespeare's and the evenness of Morris's, the ease and smoothness of Chaucer's stanza are striking. Wyatt's stanzas are musical in their way.

Eight-Line Stanza

Eight-line stanzas are variously formed—chiefly by the doubling of quatrains, sometimes with different rimes, as ababcdcd, sometimes preserving one or another or both rimes, as ababbcbc, abcbdbeb, ababacac, abababab, etc. Other varieties are abcdabcd (Rossetti) and aaabcccb (tail-rime), and aabbccdd.

One of the commonest 8-line stanzas is that imported from Italy and called ottava rima, abababcc. It has been charged with tediousness, and tedious it may become if not sedulously varied. It was introduced, along with so much else from Italy, by Wyatt, and was then employed for different purposes by Sidney, Spenser, Daniel, and others.[57] At the close of the eighteenth century it enjoyed a rebirth. "It had already been used by Harrington, Drayton, Fairfax (in his translation of Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered), and ... in later times by Gay; and it had even been used by Frere's contemporary, William Tennant; but to Frere belongs the honour of giving it the special characteristics which Byron afterwards popularized in Beppo and Don Juan.... Byron, taking up the stanza with equal skill and greater genius, filled it with the vigour of his personality, and made it a measure of his own, which it has ever since been hazardous for inferior poets to attempt."[58] Byron had first adopted the stanza in his translation of Pulci's Morgante Maggiore, which is itself in ottava rime. Beppo was written in 1817, and Don Juan begun in the next year. In 1819 the first four cantos of Don Juan were published; in 1820 Keats published his Isabella, and Shelley wrote his Witch of Atlas, both in the same metre.

Nine-Line Stanza

By far the most important of 9-line stanzas, and one of the finest of all stanzas in English poetry, is the ababbcbc⁵c⁶ invented by Spenser—a double quatrain of 5-stress lines plus an alexandrine. This particular octave had been used by Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales, and is sometimes referred to as the Monk's Tale stanza: the stroke of metrical genius lay in adding the 'supplementary harmony' of the alexandrine, by which the whole stanza climbs to a majestic close or ebbs in a delightful decrescendo as the poet wills.[59] The long swing of nine verses on three rimes, with the combined effect of the interwoven rimes (abab and bcbc) united by the couplet in the middle, culminating in the unequal couplet at the close, the extraordinary opportunity of balancing and contrasting the rime sounds, and of almost infinitely varying the pauses—all these render the Spenserian stanza incomparable for nearly every sort of poetic expression.

After the Faerie Queene, the chief poems in this metre are: Shenstone's The Schoolmistress (1742), Thomson's The Castle of Indolence (1748), Burns's The Cotter's Saturday Night (1786), Scott's Don Roderick (1811), Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1818 et seq.), Shelley's Laon and Cythna (The Revolt of Islam) (1817, 1818), and Adonais (1821), Keats's Eve of St. Agnes (1820), and the opening of Tennyson's Lotos Eaters (1833).

From the following examples only a limited conception can be gained of the stanza's varied capabilities. Long passages should be read together—and read, for this purpose, with more attention to the sound than to the meaning—in order that the peculiarities of handling of the different poets may be felt.

(Childe Harold begins with many deliberate imitations of Spenser's language and style, but soon neglects them. Here perhaps more than in any other metre the tone and subject of the poem determine the movement of the stanza. The above is but one example of Byron's great variety.)

During the earlier half of the seventeenth century a small group of poets, imitating Spenser both in substance and in external manner, introduced a number of stanzas, some of them not to be admired, whose chief characteristic is the alexandrine for a last line—e. g., abababcc⁵c⁶, ababcc⁵c⁶, ababbcc⁵c⁶, and ababbc⁵c⁶ (which last is that of Milton's On the Death of a Fair Infant, The Passion, and the introduction to On the Morning of Christ's Nativity). Another modification is that of Milton's Ode itself, aa³b⁵cc³b⁵d⁴d⁶. Matthew Prior attempted to improve the Spenserian stanza in his Ode on the Battle of Ramillies by a rime scheme (suggested perhaps by the English sonnet) ababcdcde⁵e⁶—of which Dr. Johnson says: "He has altered the stanza of Spenser, as a house is altered by building another house in its place of a different form." Still farther from the Spenserian original, but probably a development from it, is Shelley's To a Skylark abab³b⁶ (mainly in falling rhythm); and an extension of this last is Swinburne's Hertha (see above, page 81) abab²b⁶ in triple rising rhythm.

Fourteen-Line Stanza: Sonnet

The only English stanza that can be said to rival the Spenserian in artistic merit is the sonnet: but the two are for very different purposes, the one being nearly always used in long, clearly connected series, generally narrative, the other nearly always as an independent poem. Even when sonnets are written in 'sequences,' the relation of the individual sonnets to each other is rarely very close; the unity of the whole sequence (as in Rossetti's House of Life, for example, or Mrs. Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese) is one merely of general tone and subject. Some of Shakespeare's sonnets are bound together by an intimate unity like stanzas of one poem; others are completely detached. Occasionally a poem is composed of three or four sonnet-stanzas, as Leigh Hunt's The Fish, the Man, and the Spirit, but even then each sonnet remains an independent whole.

The word 'sonnet,' borrowed with the metrical form from Italy in the late sixteenth century,[61] was at first used loosely for almost any short poem on love not obviously a 'song'; but soon the term became restricted to a poem of fourteen 5-stress iambic lines arranged according to one of two definite rime schemes or their modifications. These two rime schemes are the original Italian abba abba cde cde and the English abab cdcd efef gg.

Italian Sonnet. The organization of the subject matter of an Italian sonnet is (at least theoretically) as fixed as that of the rimes. The whole should aim to convey without irrelevant detail a single thought or feeling. The first quatrain, abba, should introduce the subject; the second, abba, should develop it to a certain point, at which a pause occurs; such is the octave. The sestet continues in the first tercet, cde, the thought or feeling in a new direction or from a new point of view, and in the second, cde, brings it to a full conclusion.[62] The rime sounds of the octave and those of the sestet should be harmonious but not closely similar.

It stands to reason that very few poets have enslaved themselves to such an imperious master without assuming certain liberties. Very few sonnets of any poetic value can be found conforming strictly to all these requirements. But the general purport of the formal division may be seen in Christina Rossetti's poignant "Remember"—