4. The double rhyme. This is always trisyllabic like that mentioned under A. 3; but there is a difference between them, in that the two closing syllables of the gliding rhyme stand outside the regular rhythm of the verse; while the first and the third syllable of the double rhyme bear the second last and last arsis of the verse.
This sort of rhyme does on the whole not very often occur in Modern English poetry, and even in Middle English literature we ought to regard it as accidental. The same is the case with another (more frequent) species, namely,
5. The extended rhyme, in which an unaccented syllable preceding the rhyme proper, or an unaccented word in thesis, forms part of the rhyme, e.g. biforne: iborne Chaucer, Troil. ii. 296–8; in joye: in Troye ib. i. 118–19; to quyken: to stiken ib. 295–7; the Past: me last Byron, Ch. Harold, ii. 96; the limb: the brim ib. iii. 8, &c.
6. The unaccented rhyme, an imperfect kind of rhyme, because only the unaccented syllables of disyllabic or polysyllabic words, mostly of Germanic origin and accentuation, rhyme together, and not their accented syllables as the ordinary rule would demand, e.g. láweles, lóreless, námeless; wrécful, wróngful, sínful Song of the Magna Charta, ll. 30–2, 66–8; many rhymes of this kind occur in the alliterative-rhyming long line combined into stanzas.[182] In Modern English we find this kind of rhyme pretty often in Wyatt[183]; e.g.:
Such rhymes in dactylic feet, as in the following verses by Moore (Beauty and Song ll. 1–4),
are not harsh, because in this case the unaccented syllable which bears the rhyme is separated from the accented syllable by a thesis. A variety of the unaccented rhyme is called the accented-unaccented; examples have been quoted before in the chapter treating of the alliterative-rhyming long line (§§ 61, 62). In the same place some other verses of the above-quoted song of Moore are given, showing the admissibility of rhymes between gliding or trisyllabic and masculine rhyming-syllables or -words (mélodý: thée, Róse bè: thée). In these cases the subordinate accent of the third syllable in mélody or the word bè in the equally long Róse bè is strong enough to make a rhyme with thee possible, although this last word has a strong syntactical and rhythmical accent. As a rule such accented-unaccented rhymes, in which masculine endings rhyme with feminine endings, are very harsh, as is often the case in Wyatt’s poems (cf. Alscher, pp. 123–6), e.g.
§ 218. C. According to the third principle of classification, by the position of the rhyming syllable, the varieties of rhyme are as follows:
1. The sectional rhyme, so called because it consists of two rhyming words within one section or hemistich.[184] This kind of rhyme occurs now and then even in Old English poetry, but it is usually unintentional (cf. §§ 40–2), e.g. sǣla and mǣla; þæt is sōð metod Beow. 1611; in Middle English literature it is frequent, as in Barbour’s Bruce: and till Ingland agayne is gayne i. 144, iii. 185; That eftyr him dar na man ga iii. 166. In Modern English poetry this kind of rhyme is more frequent, and often intentionally used for artistic effect:
2. Very closely related to this is the inverse rhyme (as Guest called it), which occurs when the last accented syllable of the first hemistich of a verse rhymes with the first accented syllable of the second hemistich:
This kind of rhyme is generally met with in the popular national long line of four stresses. Guest gives a much wider range to it. But when it occurs in other kinds of verse, as in the iambic verse of four or five feet, it is not to be looked upon as an intentional rhyme, but only as a consonance caused by rhetorical repetition (the examples are quoted by Guest):
3. The Leonine[185] rhyme or middle rhyme, which recurs throughout the Old English Rhyming Poem, and is occasionally used in other Old English poems. This rhyme connects the two hemistichs of an alliterative line with each other by end-rhyme and, at the same time, causes the gradual breaking up of it into two short lines; we find it in certain parts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in Layamon, in the Proverbs of Alfred, and other poems, e.g.: his sedes to sowen, his medes to mowen Prov. 93–4; þus we uerden þere, and for þi beoþ nu here Lay. 1879–80. See §§ 49, 57–58, 78 for examples from Middle and Modern English literature of this kind of rhyme (called by the French rimes plates) as well as of the following kind, when used in even-beat metres.
4. The interlaced rhyme (rime entrelacée), by means of which two long-lined rhyming couplets are connected a second time in corresponding places (before the caesura) by another rhyme, so that they seem to be broken up into four short verses of alternate or cross-rhyme (a b a b), e.g. in the latter part of Robert Mannyng’s Rhyming Chronicle (from p. 69 of Hearne’s edition), or in the second version of Saynt Katerine (cf. the quotations, §§ 77, 78, 150). When, however, long verses without interlaced rhyme are broken up only by the arrangement of the writer or printer into short lines, we have
5. The intermittent rhyme, whose formula is a b c b (cf. p. 196). Both sorts of rhyme may also be used, of course, in other kinds of verse, shorter or longer; as a rule, however, the intermittent rhyme is employed for shorter, the alternate or cross-rhyme for longer verses, as, for example, those of five feet.
6. The enclosing rhyme, corresponding to the formula a b b a, e.g. in spray, still, fill, May, as in the quartets of the sonnet formed after the Italian model (cf. below, Book II, chap. ix). This sort of rhyme does not often occur in Middle English poetry; but we find it later, e.g. in the tail or veer of a variety of stanza used by Dunbar and Kennedy in their Flyting Poem.
7. The tail-rhyme (in French called rime couée, in German Schweifreim), the formula of which is a a b c c b. (For a specimen see § 79.)
This arrangement of rhymes originated from two long lines of the same structure, formed into a couplet by end-rhyme, each of the lines being divided into three sections (whence the name versus tripertiti caudati). This couplet, the formula of which was – a – a – b || – c – c – b, is, in the form in which it actually appears broken up into a stanza of six short lines, viz. two longer couplets a a, c c, and a pair of shorter lines rhyming together as b b, the order of rhymes being a a b c c b. (For remarks on the origin of this stanza see § 240.)
§ 219. As to the quality of the rhyme, purity or exactness, of course, is and always has been a chief requirement. It is, however, well known that the need for this exactness is frequently disregarded not only in Old and Middle English poetry (cf. e.g. the Old English assonances meant for rhymes, § 40, or the often very defective rhymes of Layamon, § 45) but even in Modern English poetry. Many instructive examples of defective rhymes from Spenser, Sidney, Shakespeare, and Dryden are given by A.J. Ellis, On Early Engl. Pronunciation, iii. 858–74, 953–66, iv. 1033–9.
From these collections of instances we see how a class of imperfect rhymes came into existence in consequence of the change in the pronunciation of certain vowels, from which it resulted that many pairs of words that originally rhymed together, more or less perfectly, ceased to be rhymes at all to the ear, although, as the spelling remained unaltered, they retained in their written form a delusive appearance of correspondence. These ‘eye-rhymes’, as they are called, play an important part in English poetry, being frequently admitted by later poets, who continue to rhyme together words such as eye: majesty Pope, Temple of Fame, 202–3; crowns: owns ib. 242–3; own’d: found id. Wife of Bath, 32–3, notwithstanding the fact that the vowel of the two words, which at first formed perfect rhymes, had long before been diphthongized or otherwise changed while the other word still kept its original vowel-sound.
§ 220. On the model of the Provençal and Northern French lyrics, where the rhyme was indispensable in the construction of stanzas, rhyme found a similar employment in Middle English poetry. Certain simple kinds of stanzas, however, were in their formation just as much influenced by the Low Latin hymn forms, in which at that time rhyme had long been in vogue.
But the rules prescribed for the formation of stanzas by the Provençal poets in theory and practice were observed neither by the Northern French, nor by the Middle English poets with equal rigour, although later on, it is true, in the court-poetry greater strictness prevailed than in popular lyrical poetry.
One of the chief general laws relating to the use of rhyme in the formation of stanzas has already been mentioned in § 214 (at the end). A few other points of special importance require to be noticed here.
Both in Middle English and in Romanic poetry we find stanzas with a single rhyme only and stanzas with varied rhymes. But the use of the same rhymes throughout all the stanzas of one poem (in German called Durchreimung), so frequent in Romanic literature, occurs in Middle English poetry only in some later poems imitated directly from Romanic models. As a rule, both where the rhyme in the same stanza is single and where it is varied, all the stanzas have different rhymes, and only the rhyme-system, the arrangement of rhymes, is the same throughout the poem. It is, however, very rarely and only in Modern English literary poetry that the several stanzas are strictly uniform with regard to the use of masculine and feminine rhyme; as a rule the two kinds are employed. Sometimes, it is true, in the anisometrical ‘lays’, as they are called, as well as in the later popular ballads (e.g. in Chevy Chace and The Battle of Otterbourne), we find single stanzas deviating from the rest in rhyme-arrangement as well as in number of lines, the stanzas consisting of Septenary lines with cross-rhymes and intermittent rhymes (a b a b, and a b c b) being combined now and then with tail-rhyme. This is found to a still greater extent in lyrical poetry of the seventeenth century (e.g. Cowley, G. Herbert, &c.) as well as in odic stanzas of the same or a somewhat later period.
§ 221. It does not often happen in Middle English poetry that a line is not connected by rhyme with a corresponding line in the same stanza to which it belongs, but only with one in the next stanza. In Modern English poetry this peculiarity, corresponding to what are called Körner in German metres, may not unfrequently be observed in certain poetic forms of Italian origin, as the terza rima or the sestain. Of equally rare occurrence in English strophic poetry are lines without any rhyme (analogous to the Waisen—literally ‘orphans’—of Middle High German poetry), which were strictly prohibited in Provençal poetry. In Middle English literature they hardly ever occur, but are somewhat more frequent in Modern English poetry, where they generally come at the end of the stanza. On the other hand the mode of connecting successive stanzas, technically called Concatenatio (rhyme-linking), so frequently used by the Provençal and Northern French poets, is very common in Middle English verse. Three different varieties of this device are to be distinguished, viz.:
1. The repetition of the rhyme-word (or of a word standing close by it) of the last line of a stanza, at the beginning of the first line of the following stanza.
2. The repetition of the whole last line of a stanza, including the rhyme-word, as the initial line of the following stanza (not very common); and
3. The repetition of the last rhyme of a stanza as the first rhyme of the following one; so that the last rhyme-word of one stanza and the first rhyme-word of the next not only rhyme with the corresponding rhyme-words of their own stanzas, but also with one another. Such ‘concatenations’ frequently connect the first and the last part (i.e. the frons and the cauda) of a stanza with each other. They even connect the single lines of the same stanza and sometimes of a whole poem, with each other, as e.g. in the ‘Rhyme-beginning Fragment’ in Furnivall’s Early English Poems and Lives of Saints, p. 21 (cf. Metrik, i, p. 317)
§ 222. Another and more usual means of connecting the single stanzas of a poem with each other is the refrain (called by the Provençal poets refrim, i.e. ‘echo’; by German metrists sometimes called Kehrreim, i.e. recurrent rhyme). The refrain is of popular origin, arising from the part taken by the people in popular songs or ecclesiastical hymns by repeating certain exclamations, words, or sentences at the end of single lines or stanzas. The refrain generally occurs at the end of a stanza, rarely in the interior of a stanza or in both places, as in a late ballad quoted by Ritson, Ancient Songs and Ballads, ii. 75.
In Old English poetry the refrain is used in one poem only, viz. in Deor’s Complaint, as the repetition of a whole line. In Middle and Modern English poetry the refrain is much more extensively employed. Its simplest form, consisting of the repetition of certain exclamations or single words after each stanza, occurs pretty often in Middle English. Frequent use is also made of the other form, in which one line is partially or entirely repeated. Sometimes, indeed, two or even more lines are repeated, or a whole stanza is added as refrain to each of the main stanzas, and is then placed at the beginning of the poem (cf. Wright’s Spec. of Lyr. Poetry, p. 51).
In English the refrain is also called burthen, and consists (according to Guest) of the entire or at least partial repetition of the same words. Distinct from the burthen or refrain is the wheel, which is only the repetition of the same rhythm as an addition to a stanza. In Middle English poetry especially a favourite form was that in which a stanza consisting mostly of alliterative-rhyming verses or half-verses (cf. §§ 60, 61, 66) is followed by an addition (the cauda), differing very much from the rhythmical structure of the main part (the frons) of the stanza, and connected with it by means of a very short verse consisting of only one arsis and the syllable or syllables forming the thesis. This short verse is called by Guest bob-verse, and the cauda, connected with the chief stanza by means of such a verse, he calls bob-wheel, so that the whole stanza, which is of a very remarkable form, might be called the bob-wheel stanza. The similar form of stanza, also very common, where the chief part of the stanza is connected with the ‘cauda’, not by a ‘bob-verse’ but by an ordinary long line, might be called the wheel-stanza. These remarks now bring us to other considerations of importance with regard to the formation of the stanza, which will be treated of in the next section.
§ 223. The structure and arrangement of the different parts of the stanza in Middle English poetry were also modelled on Low Latin and especially on Romanic forms.
The theory of the structure of stanzas in Provençal and Italian is given along with much interesting matter in Dante’s treatise De vulgari eloquentia[186], where the original Romanic technical terms are found. Several terms used in this book have also been taken from German metrics.
In the history of Middle English poetry two groups of stanzas must be distinguished: divisible and indivisible stanzas (the one-rhymed stanzas being included in the latter class). The divisible stanzas consist either of two equal parts (bipartite equal-membered stanzas) or of two unequal parts (bipartite unequal-membered stanzas) or thirdly of two equal parts and an unequal one (tripartite stanzas). Now and then (especially in Modern English poetry) they consist of three equal parts. These three types are common to Middle and Modern English poetry. A fourth class is met with in Modern English poetry only, viz. stanzas generally consisting of three, sometimes of four or more unequal parts.
All the kinds of verse that have been previously described in this work can be used in these different classes of stanzas, both separately and conjointly. In each group, accordingly, isometrical and anisometrical stanzas must be distinguished. Very rarely, and only in Modern English, we find that even the rhythm of the separate verses of a stanza is not uniform; iambic and trochaic, anapaestic and dactylic, or iambic and anapaestic verses interchanging with each other, so that a further distinction between isorhythmical and anisorhythmical stanzas is possible.
§ 224. The bipartite equal-membered stanzas, in their simplest form, consist of two equal periods, each composed of a prior and a succeeding member. They are to be regarded as the primary forms of all strophic poetry.
The two periods may be composed either of two rhyming couplets or of four verses rhyming alternately with each other. Specimens of both classes have been quoted above (§ 78). Such equal-membered stanzas can be extended, of course, in each part uniformly without changing the isometrical character of the stanza.
§ 225. The bipartite unequal-membered stanzas belong to a more advanced stage in the formation of the stanza. They are, however, found already in Provençal poetry, and consist of the ‘forehead’ (frons) and the ‘tail’ or veer (cauda). The frons and the cauda differ sometimes only in the number of verses, and consequently, in the order of the rhymes, and sometimes also in the nature of the verse. The two parts may either have quite different rhymes or be connected together by one or several common rhymes. As a simple specimen of this sort of stanza the first stanza of Dunbar’s None may assure in this warld may be quoted here:
In literary poetry, however, the tripartite stanzas are commoner than the bipartite unequal-membered stanzas just noticed; they are as much in favour as the bipartite, equal-membered stanzas are in popular poetry. In Provençal and Northern French poetry the principle of a triple partition in the structure of stanzas was developed very early. Stanzas on these models were very soon imported into Middle English poetry.
§ 226. The tripartite stanzas generally (apart from Modern English forms) consist of two equal parts and one unequal part, which admit of being arranged in different ways. They have accordingly different names. If the two equal parts precede they are called pedes, both together the opening (in German Aufgesang =‘upsong’); the unequal part that concludes the stanza is called the conclusion or the veer, tail, or cauda (in German Abgesang =‘downsong’). If the unequal part precedes it is called frons (=‘forehead’); the two equal parts that form the end of the stanza are called versus (‘turns,’ in German Wenden). The former arrangement, however, is by far the more frequent.
There are various ways of separating the first from the last part of the stanza: (a) by a pause, which, as a rule, in Romanic as well as in Middle English poetry occurs between the two chief parts; (b) by a difference in their structure (whether in rhyme-arrangement only, or both in regard to the kinds and the number of verses). But even then the two chief parts are generally separated by a pause. We thus obtain three kinds of tripartite stanzas:
1. Stanzas in which the first and the last part differ in versification; the lines of the last part may either be longer or shorter than those of the ‘pedes’. Difference in rhythmical structure as well as in length of line is in Middle English poetry confined to the bob-wheel stanzas, and is not otherwise common except in Modern English poetry.
2. Stanzas in which the parts differ in number of verses. The number may be either greater or smaller in the last part than in the two ‘pedes’, which, of course, involves at the same time a difference in the order of the rhymes. Change of length, however, and change of versification in the last part in comparison with the half of the first part are generally combined.
3. Stanzas in which the parts agree in versification but differ in the arrangement of the rhymes; the number of verses in the cauda being either the same as that of one of the pedes, or (as commonly the case) different from it.
In all these cases the first and the last part of the stanza may have quite different rhymes, or they may, in stanzas of more artistic construction, have one or several rhymes in common.
If the frons precedes the versus, the same distinctions, of course, are possible between the two chief parts.
§ 227. The following specimens illustrate first of all the two chief kinds of arrangement; i.e. the pedes preceding the cauda, and the frons preceding the versus:
Theoretically, the second stanza might also be regarded as a stanza consisting of two pedes and two versus, or, in other words, as a four-part stanza of two equal parts in each half. Stanzas of this kind occur pretty often in Middle and Modern English poetry. They mostly, however, convey the effect of a tripartite stanza on account of the greater extent of the one pair of equal parts of the stanza.
The tripartition effected only by a difference in the arrangement of rhymes either in the pedes and the cauda, or in the frons and the versus, will be illustrated by the following specimens:
A very rare variety of tripartition that, as far as we know, does not occur till Modern English times, is that by which the cauda is placed between the two pedes. This arrangement, of course, may occur in each of the three kinds of tripartition. A specimen of the last kind (viz. that in which the cauda is distinguished from the pedes by a different arrangement of rhymes) may suffice to explain it:
Lastly, it is to be remarked that the inequality of Modern English stanzas, which may be composed of two or three or several parts, admits, of course, of many varieties. Generally, however, their structure is somewhat analogous to that of the regular tripartite stanzas (cf. below, Book II, chap. vi).
In Romanic poetry the tripartite structure sometimes was carried on also through the whole song, it being composed either of three or six stanzas (that is to say, of three equal groups of stanzas), or, what is more usual, of seven or five stanzas (i.e. of two equal parts and an unequal part). In Middle English literary poetry, too, this practice is fairly common;[187] in Modern English poetry, on the other hand, it occurs only in the most recent times, being chiefly adopted in imitations of Romanic forms of stanza, especially the ballade.
§ 228. The envoi. Closely connected with the last-mentioned point, viz. the partition of the whole poem, is the structural element in German called Geleit, in Provençal poetry tornada (i.e. ‘turning’, ‘apostrophe’, or ‘address’), in Northern French poetry envoi, a term which was retained sometimes by Middle English poets as the title for this kind of stanza (occasionally even for a whole poem). The tornada used chiefly in the ballade is a sort of epilogue to the poem proper. It was a rule in Provençal poetry (observed often in Old French also) that it must agree in form with the concluding part of the preceding stanza. It was also necessary that with regard to its tenor it should have some sort of connexion with the poem; although, as a rule, its purpose was to give expression to personal feelings. The tornada is either a sort of farewell which the poet addresses to the poem itself, or it contains the order to a messenger to deliver the poem to the poet’s mistress or to one of his patrons; sometimes these persons are directly praised or complimented. In Middle English poetry the envoi mostly serves the same purposes. But there are some variations from the Provençal custom both as to contents and especially as to form.
§ 229. We may distinguish three kinds of so-called envois in Middle English poetry: (1) Real envois. (2) Concluding stanzas resembling envois as to their form. (3) Concluding stanzas resembling envois as to their contents.
The most important are the real envois. Of these, two subordinate species can be distinguished: (a) when the form of the envoi differs from the form of the stanza, as in Wright’s Spec. of Lyr. Poetry, p. 92, and even more markedly in Chaucer’s Compleynt to his Purse, a poem of stanzas of seven lines, the envoi of which addressed to the king consists of five verses only; (b) when the form of the envoi is the same as that of the other stanzas of the poem, as e.g. in Wright’s Spec. of Lyr. Poetry, p. 111 (a greeting to a mistress), in Dunbar’s Goldin Targe (address to the poem itself).
When the poem is of some length the envoi may consist of several stanzas; thus in Chaucer’s Clerkes Tale (stanzas of seven lines) the envoi has six stanzas of six lines each.
Concluding stanzas resembling envois in their form are generally shorter than the chief stanzas, but of similar structure. Generally speaking they are not very common. Specimens may be found in Wright’s Spec. of Lyr. Poetry, pp. 38, 47, &c.
Concluding stanzas resembling envois in their contents. An example occurs in Wright’s Spec. of Lyr. Poetry, p. 31, where the concluding stanza contains an address to another poet. Religious poems end with addresses to God, Christ, the Virgin, invitations to prayer, &c.; for examples see Wright’s Spec. of Lyr. Poetry, p. 111, and Hymns to the Virgin (ed. Furnivall, E. E. T. S. 24), p. 39, &c. All these may possibly fall under this category.
Even in Modern English poetry the envoi has not quite gone out of use. Short envois occur in Spenser, Epithalamium; S. Daniel, To the Angel Spirit of Sir Philip Sidney (Poets, iv. 228); W. Scott, Marmion (Envoy, consisting of four-foot verses rhyming in couplets), Harold, Lord of the Isles, Lady of the Lake (Spenserian stanzas); Southey, Lay of the Laureate (x. 139–74), &c.; Swinburne, Poems and Ballads, i, pp. 1, 5, 141, &c.
Concluding stanzas resembling envois occur pretty often in poets of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as Carew, Donne, Cowley, Waller, Dodsley, &c. (cf. Metrik, ii, p. 794 note).
§ 230. Two-line stanzas. The simplest bipartite equal-membered stanza is that of two isometrical verses only. In the Northern English translation of the Psalms (Surtees Society, vols. xvi and xix) we find, for the most part, two-line stanzas of four-foot verses rhyming in couplets, occasionally alternating with stanzas of four, six, eight, or more lines.
In Middle English poetry, however, this form was generally used for longer poems that were not arranged in stanzas. Although it would be possible to divide some of these (e.g. the Moral Ode), either throughout or in certain parts, into bipartite stanzas, there is no reason to suppose that any strophic arrangement was intended.
In Modern English, on the other hand, such an arrangement is often intentional, as in R. Browning, The Boy and the Angel (iv. 158), a poem of four-foot trochaic verses:
Similar stanzas in other metres occur in Longfellow, Tennyson, Thackeray, Rossetti, &c.; among them we find e.g. eight-foot trochaic and iambic-anapaestic verses (cf. Metrik, ii, § 3).
§ 231. More frequently we find four-line stanzas, consisting of couplets. In Middle English lyric poetry such stanzas of two short couplets are occasionally met with as early as in the Surtees Psalms, but they occur more frequently in Modern English, e.g. in M. Arnold, Urania (p. 217), and in Carew, e.g. The Inquiry (Poets, iii):
Regular alternation of masculine and feminine rhymes is very rarely found in this simple stanza (or indeed in any Middle English stanzas); it is, properly speaking, only a series of rhyming couplets with a stop after every fourth line.
This stanza is very popular, as are also various analogous four-line stanzas in other metres. One of these is the quatrain of four-foot trochaic verses, as used by M. Arnold in The Last Word, and by Milton, e.g. in Psalm CXXXVI, where the two last lines form the refrain, so that the strophic arrangement is more distinctly marked. Stanzas of four-foot iambic-anapaestic lines we find e.g. in Moore, ’Tis the last Rose of Summer, and similar stanzas of five-foot iambic verses in Cowper, pp. 359, 410; M. Arnold, Self-Dependence (last stanza).
Less common are the quatrains of four-foot dactylic lines, of three-foot iambic-anapaestic lines, of six-foot iambic and trochaic lines, of seven-foot iambic lines, and of eight-foot trochaic lines. But specimens of each of these varieties are occasionally met with (cf. Metrik, ii, § 261)
§ 232. The double stanza, i.e. that of eight lines of the same structure (a a b b c c d d), occurs in different kinds of verse. With lines of four measures it is found, e.g. in Suckling’s poem, The Expostulation (Poets, iii. 749):
This stanza comes to a better conclusion when it winds up with a refrain, as in Percy’s Reliques, II. ii. 13. One very popular form of it consists of four-foot trochaic lines, e.g. in Burns, p. 197, M. Arnold, A Memory Picture, p. 23 (the two last lines of each stanza forming a refrain), or of four-foot iambic-anapaestic lines (Burns, My heart’s in the Highlands). Somewhat rarely it is made up of five-foot iambic or septenaric lines (cf. Metrik, ii, § 262).[188].
§ 233. We have next to consider the stanzas of four isometrical lines with intermittent rhyme (a b c b). As a rule they consist of three- or four-foot verses, which are really Alexandrines or acatalectic tetrameters rhyming in long couplets, and only in their written or printed arrangement broken up into short lines; as, e.g., in the following half-stanza from the older version of the Legend of St. Katherine, really written in eight-lined stanzas (ed. Horstmann, Altenglische Legenden, Neue Folge, Heilbronn, 1881, p. 242):
Examples of such stanzas of four-foot trochaic and three-foot iambic verses that occur chiefly in Percy’s Reliques (cf. Metrik, ii, § 264), but also in M. Arnold, Calais Sands (p. 219), The Church of Brou, I., The Castle (p. 13, feminine and masculine verse-endings alternating), New Rome, p. 229, Parting, p. 191 (iambic-anapaestic three-beat and two-beat verses), Iseult of Ireland, p. 150 (iambic verses of five measures); cf. Metrik, ii, § 264
§ 234. Stanzas of eight lines result from this stanza by doubling, i. e. by adding a second couplet of the same structure and rhyme to the original long-line couplet. Such a form with the scheme a b c b d b e b meet in the complete stanza of the older Legend of St. Katherine just referred to: