Chapter 5

Why do the Gentiles tumult, and the nationsMuse a vain thing, the kings of earth upstandWith power, and princes in their congregationsLay deep their plots together through each landAgainst the Lord and his Messiah dear?"Let us break off," say they, "by strength of handTheir bonds, and cast from us, no more to wear,Their twisted cords." He who in Heaven doth dwellShall laugh.

Why do the Gentiles tumult, and the nationsMuse a vain thing, the kings of earth upstandWith power, and princes in their congregations

Lay deep their plots together through each landAgainst the Lord and his Messiah dear?"Let us break off," say they, "by strength of hand

Their bonds, and cast from us, no more to wear,Their twisted cords." He who in Heaven doth dwellShall laugh.

(Milton:Psalm II.1653.)

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves deadAre driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thouWho chariotest to their dark wintry bedThe winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,Each like a corpse within its grave, untilThine azure sister of the Spring shall blowHer clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)With living hues and odors plain and hill:Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;Destroyer and Preserver; hear, oh hear!

(Shelley:Ode to the West Wind.1819.)

In this case the tercets are united in groups of three to form a strophe of fourteen lines together with a final couplet riming with the middle line of the preceding tercet.

The true has no value beyond the sham:As well the counter as coin, I submit,When your table's a hat, and your prize a dram.Stake your counter as boldly every whit,Venture as warily, use the same skill,Do your best, whether winning or losing it,If you choose to play!—is my principle.Let a man contend to the uttermostFor his life's set prize, be it what it will!

The true has no value beyond the sham:As well the counter as coin, I submit,When your table's a hat, and your prize a dram.

Stake your counter as boldly every whit,Venture as warily, use the same skill,Do your best, whether winning or losing it,

If you choose to play!—is my principle.Let a man contend to the uttermostFor his life's set prize, be it what it will!

(Browning:The Statue and the Bust.1855.)

The effort to translate Dante in the original metre is especially interesting, and marked by great difficulties; to furnish the necessary rimes, without introducing expletive words that mar the simplicity of the original, being a serious problem. The following are interesting specimens of translations where this problem is grappled with; the first is a well-known fragment, the second a portion of a still unpublished translation of theInferno, reproduced here by the courtesy of the author.

Then she to me: "The greatest of all woesIs to remind us of our happy daysIn misery, and that thy teacher knows.But if to learn our passion's first root preysUpon thy spirit with such sympathy,I will do even as he who weeps and says.We read one day for pastime, seated nigh,Of Lancelot, how love enchained him too.We were alone, quite unsuspiciously.But oft our eyes met, and our cheeks in hueAll o'er discolored by that reading were;But one point only wholly us o'erthrew;When we read the long-sighed-for smile of her,To be thus kissed by such devoted lover,He who from me can be divided ne'erKissed my mouth, trembling in the act all over.Accursed was the book and he who wrote!That day no further leaf did we uncover."

(Byron:Francesca of Rimini, from Dante'sInferno, Canto V. 1820.)

"Wherefore for thee I think and deem it wellThou follow me, and I will bring aboutThy passage thither where the eternal dwell.There shalt thou hearken the despairing shout,Shalt see the ancient spirits with woe opprest,Who craving for the second death cry out.Then shalt thou those behold who are at restAmid the flame, because their hopes aspireTo come, when it may be, among the blest.If to ascend to these be thy desire,Thereto shall be a soul of worthier strain;Thee shall I leave with her when I retire:Because the Emperor who there doth reign,For I rebellious was to his decree,Wills that his city none by me attain.In all parts ruleth, and there reigneth he,—There is his city and his lofty throne:O happy they who thereto chosen be!"

(Melville B. Anderson:Dante's Inferno, Canto i. ll. 112-129.)

Suete iesu, king of blysse,Myn huerte love, min huerte lisse,Þou art suete myd ywisse,Wo is him þat þe shal misse!

(Song from Harleian Ms. 2253—12th century, Böddeker'sAltenglische Dichtungen, p. 191.)

O Lord, that rul'st our mortal line,How through the world Thy name doth shine;Thou hast of Thy unmatched gloryUpon the heavens engrav'd Thy story.

(Sir Philip Sidney:Psalm viii.ab. 1580.)

A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew,And the young winds fed it with silver dew,And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light,And closed them beneath the kisses of night.

(Shelley:The Sensitive Plant.1820.)

In somer, when the shawes be sheyne,And leves be large and long,Hit is full mery in feyre foresteTo here the foulys song.

(Ballad ofRobin Hood and the Monk. In Gummere'sEnglish Ballads, p. 77.)

This is the familiar stanza of the early ballads. The omission of rime in the third line signalizes the fact that the stanza could be (and was) regarded indifferently as made up either of two long lines or four short ones. Thus the famous Chevy Chase ballad is found (Ashmole Ms., of about 1560) written in long lines:

"The yngglyshe men hade ther bowys ybent yer hartes wer good ynougheThe first off arros that the shote off seven skore spear-men the sloughe."

(See in Flügel'sNeuenglisches Lesebuch, vol. i. p. 199.)

The same thing occurs also where there are two rimes to the stanza. Originally, the extra internal rime was no doubt the cause of the breaking up of the long couplet into two short lines. (See examples in Part Two, in the case of the septenary.)

Ye flowery banks o' bonnie Doon,How can ye bloom sae fair!How can ye chant, ye little birds,And I sae fu' o' care!

(Burns:Bonnie Doon.ab. 1790.)

Þe grace of god ful of miȝtÞat is king and ever was,Mote among us aliȝtAnd ȝive us alle is swet grace.

(From the Harleian Ms. 913. In Mätzner'sAltenglische Sprachproben, vol. i. p. 125.)

Furnivall prints this in long lines with internal rime, which of itself seems to form the short-line stanza from the long lines.

Of al this world the wyde compasHit wol not in myn armes tweyne.—Who-so mochel wol embraceLitel thereof he shal distreyne.

(Chaucer:Proverb.ab. 1380.)

When youth had led me half the race,That Cupid's scourge me caus'd to run,I looked back to meet the placeFrom whence my weary course begun.

(Earl of Surrey:Description of the restless state of a lover.ab. 1545.)

Weep with me, all you that readThis little story;And know, for whom a tear you shedDeath's self is sorry.

(Ben Jonson:Epitaph on Salathiel Pavy.1616.)

And now the weary world's great medicine, Sleep,This learned host dispensed to every guest,Which shuts those wounds where injured lovers weep,And flies oppressors to relieve the opprest.

(Sir William Davenant:Gondibert, Bk. i. Canto 6. 1651)

Now like a maiden queen she will beholdFrom her high turrets hourly suitors come;The East with incense and the West with goldWill stand like suppliants to receive her doom.

(Dryden:Annus Mirabilis, stanza 297. 1667.)

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,Await alike the inevitable hour.The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

(Gray:Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.1751.)

To Davenant'sGondibertis usually traced the use of this "heroic" stanza (ababin iambic five-stress lines) in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In his preface the author said: "I believed it would be more pleasant to the reader, in a work of length, to give this respite or pause, between every stanza, ... than to run him out of breath with continued couplets. Nor doth alternate rime by any lowliness of cadence make the sound less heroic, but rather adapt it to a plain and stately composing of music." Dryden followed Davenant in using the stanza for hisAnnus Mirabilis, saying in his preface: "I have chosen to write my poem in quatrains, or stanzas of four in alternate rhyme, because I have ever judged them more noble, and of greater dignity, both for the sound and number, than any other verse in use amongst us.... I have always found the couplet verse most easy (though not so proper for this occasion), for there the work is sooner at an end, every two lines concluding the labor of the poet; but in quatrains he is to carry it further on, and not only so, but to bear along in his head the troublesome sense of four lines together." Dryden did not use the stanza again, however, and it is obviously unsuited to a long narrative poem. Saintsbury says: "With regard to the nobility and dignity ofthis stanza, it may safely be said thatAnnus Mirabilisitself, the best poem ever written therein, killed it by exposing its faults.... It is chargeable with more than the disjointedness of the couplet, without the possibility of relief; while, on the other hand, the quatrains have not, like the Spenserian stave or theottava rima, sufficient bulk to form units in themselves." (Life of Dryden, Men of Letters Series, p. 34.)

It is hard to say what Mr. Saintsbury means in speaking of theAnnus Mirabilisas the best poem ever written in the heroic quatrain, when we remember that it is the quatrain of Gray'sElegy. On the possible sources of his use of it, see Gosse'sLife of Gray, in the Men of Letters Series, p. 98 (also hisFrom Shakespeare to Pope, p. 140). Mr. Gosse refers to the use of the quatrain by Sir John Davies in theNosce Teipsum(1599), with which Gray was familiar, and (in addition to Davenant, Dryden, and Hobbes'sHomer) to theLove Elegiesof James Hammond, published 1743. "It is believed that the printing of Hammond's verses incited Gray to begin hisChurchyard Elegy, and to make the four-line stanza the basis of most of his harmonies.... The measure itself, from first to last, is an attempt to render in English the solemn alternation of passion and reserve, the interchange of imploring and desponding tones, that is found in the Latin elegiac; and Gray gave his poem, when he first published it, an outward resemblance to the text of Tibullus by printing it without any stanzaic pauses." Mr. Gosse neglects the elegies of William Shenstone, which were also in the quatrain, and some of which had apparently been published before theChurchyard Elegy. On this matter see Beers'sRomanticism in the Eighteenth Century, p. 137, where Shenstone is said to have borrowed the stanza from Hammond, and Gray from Shenstone. Shenstone, in hisPrefatory Essay on Elegy, defended the metrical form and referred to the elegies of Hammond. "Heroic metre, with alternate rhyme, seems well enough adapted to this species of poetry; and, however exceptionable upon other occasions, its inconveniencies appear to lose their weight in shorter elegies, and its advantages seem to acquire an additionalimportance. The world has an admirable example of its beauty in a collection of elegies not long since published." (Chalmers'sEnglish Poets, vol. xiii. p. 264.)

For there was Milton like a seraph strong,Beside him Shakespeare bland and mild;And there the world-worn Dante grasped his song,And somewhat grimly smiled.

(Tennyson:The Palace of Art.1833.)

Yet those lips, so sweetly swelling,Do invite a stealing Kiss.Now will I but venture this;Who will read, must first learn spelling.

(Sir Philip Sidney:Astrophel and Stella, Song ii. ab. 1580.)

Let the bird of loudest lay,On the sole Arabian tree,Herald sad and trumpet be,To whose sound chaste wings obey.

(Shakspere:The Phœnix and the Turtle, 1601.)

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

(Ben Jonson:Elegy, inUnderwoods. 1616.)

Lord, in thine anger do not reprehend me,Nor in thy hot displeasure me correct;Pity me, Lord, for I am much deject,And very weak and faint; heal and amend me.

(Milton:Psalm vi.1653.)

Away, those cloudy looks, that lab'ring sigh,The peevish offspring of a sickly hour!Nor meanly thus complain of fortune's power,When the blind gamester throws a luckless die.

(Coleridge:To a Friend.ab. 1795.)

Twelve struck. That sound, by dwindling yearsHeard in each hour, crept off; and thenThe ruffled silence spread again,Like water that a pebble stirs.

(Rossetti:My Sister's Sleep.1850.)

I hold it true, whate'er befall;I feel it when I sorrow most;'Tis better to have loved and lostThan never to have loved at all.

(Tennyson:In Memoriam, xxvii. 1850.)

Sweet after showers, ambrosial air,That rollest from the gorgeous gloomOf evening over brake and bloomAnd meadow, slowly breathing bareThe round of space, and rapt belowThro' all the dewy-tasselled wood,And shadowing down the horned floodIn ripples, fan my brows and blowThe fever from my cheek, and sighThe full new life that feeds thy breathThroughout my frame, till Doubt and Death,Ill brethren, let the fancy flyFrom belt to belt of crimson seasOn leagues of odor streaming far,To where in yonder orient starA hundred spirits whisper "Peace."

Sweet after showers, ambrosial air,That rollest from the gorgeous gloomOf evening over brake and bloomAnd meadow, slowly breathing bare

The round of space, and rapt belowThro' all the dewy-tasselled wood,And shadowing down the horned floodIn ripples, fan my brows and blow

The fever from my cheek, and sighThe full new life that feeds thy breathThroughout my frame, till Doubt and Death,Ill brethren, let the fancy fly

From belt to belt of crimson seasOn leagues of odor streaming far,To where in yonder orient starA hundred spirits whisper "Peace."

(Tennyson:ibid., lxxxiv.)

This stanza (abbain four-stress iambics) is commonly known as the "In Memoriamstanza," from its familiar use by Tennyson. Tennyson is indeed said to have invented it for his own use, not knowing of its earlier appearance in the works of Jonson and Rossetti. Professor Corson has an interesting passage on the poetic quality of the stanza: "By the rhyme-scheme of the quatrain, the terminal rhyme-emphasis of the stanza is reduced, the second and third verses being most closely braced by the rhyme. The stanza is thus admirably adapted to that 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." Compare the stanza quoted above from section xxvii. with the transposed form:

"I feel it when I sorrow most;I hold it true, whate'er befall;'Tis better to have loved and lostThan never to have loved at all."

On the passage quoted from section lxxxiv. Professor Corson also observes: "The four stanzas of which it is composed constitute but one period, the sense being suspended till the close. The rhyme-emphasis is so distributed that any one, hearing the poem read, would hardly be sensible of any of the slightest checks in the continuous and even movement of the verse....There is no other section ofIn Memoriamin which the artistic motive of the stanza is so evident." (Primer of English Verse, pp. 70-77.)

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

(Sir Philip Sidney:Astrophel and Stella.Song i, ab. 1580.)

Here the third line (the same in all the stanzas) has an additional internal rime.

Oh, make the most of what we yet may spend,Before we too into the dust descend;Dust into dust, and under dust, to lie,Sans wine, sans song, sans singer, and—sans end!

(Edw. Fitzgerald:Paraphrase of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam.1859.)

For groves of pine on either hand,To break the blast of winter, stand;And further on, the hoary ChannelTumbles a billow on chalk and sand.

(Tennyson:To the Rev. F. D. Maurice.1854.)

This delightful stanza (used also by Tennyson inThe Daisy) seems to be an imitation of the well-known Alcaic stanza of Horace:

"Vides, ut alta stet nive candidumSoracte, nec jam sustineant onusSilvae laborantes, geluqueFlumina constiterint acuto."

Ah, yet would God this flesh of mine might beWhere air would wash and long leaves cover me,Where tides of grass break into foam of flowers,Or where the wind's feet shine along the sea.

(Swinburne:Laus Veneris.)

In this group of refrain stanzas there is no attempt to make the range of illustrations complete, but only to suggest how the refrain idea has been variously used in forming the structure of the stanza. In some cases, for example, it will be seen that the refrain is a mere appendage orcodato the stanza; in others it is made by rime a part of the organized structure.

Blow, northerne wynd,Sent þou my suetyng!Blow, norþern wynd,Blou! blou! blou!

(Song from Harleian Ms. 2253; Böddeker'sAltenglische Dichtungen, p. 168.)

I that in heill wes and glaidness,Am trublit now with gret seikness,And feblit with infirmitie;Timor Mortis conturbat me.

(William Dunbar:Lament for the Makaris.ab. 1500.)

Now Simmer blinks on flowery braes,And o'er the crystal streamlets plays;Come, let us spend the lightsome daysIn the birks of Aberfeldy.

(Burns:The Birks of Aberfeldy.1787.)

I wish I were where Helen lies;Night and day on me she cries;O that I were where Helen liesOn fair Kirconnell lea!

(Fair Helen; old ballad.)

O sing unto my roundelay,O drop the briny tear with me,Dance no more at holy-day,Like a running river be.My love is dead,Gone to his death-bed,All under the willow tree.

(Chatterton: Minstrel's Roundelay fromÆlla. ab. 1770.)

The twentieth year is well-nigh past,Since first our sky was overcast;Ah, would that this might be the last!My Mary!

(Cowper:My Mary.1793.)

Duncan Gray cam' here to woo—Ha, ha, the wooing o't!On blithe Yule night, when we were fou—Ha, ha, the wooing o't!Maggie coost her head fu' heigh,Looked asklent and unco skeigh,Gart poor Duncan stand abeigh;Ha, ha, the wooing o't!

(Burns:Duncan Gray.ab. 1790.)

My heart is wasted with my woe,Oriana.There is no rest for me below,Oriana.When the long dun wolds are ribb'd with snow,And loud the Norland whirlwinds blow,Oriana,Alone I wander to and fro,Oriana.

(Tennyson:Ballad of Oriana.ab. 1830.)

Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west,(Toll slowly)And I smiled to think God's greatness flowed around our incompleteness—Round our restlessness His rest.

(Elizabeth B. Browning:Rhyme of the Duchess May.ab. 1845.)

"Ah! what white thing at the door has cross'd,Sister Helen?Ah! what is this that sighs in the frost?""A soul that's lost as mine is lost,Little brother!"(O Mother, Mary Mother,Lost, lost, all lost, between Hell and Heaven!)

(Rossetti:Sister Helen.1870.)

LaetabundusExultet fidelis chorus,Alleluia!Egidio psallat coetusIste laetus,Alleluia!

(St. Bernard:De Nativitate Domini.)

Sermone Marcus Tullius,Fortuna Cesar JuliusTibi non equantur.Tibi summa prudentia,Prefulgens et potentiaCelesti dono dantur.

(From a 12th c. MS.:Regulae de Rhythmis.In Schipper'sEnglische Metrik, vol. i. p. 354.)

Quant li solleiz conviset en leonEn icel tens qu'est ortus pliadonPerunt matin,Une pulcellet odit molt gent plorerEt son ami dolcement regreter,Ex si lli dis.

(Early French version of theSong of Songs, quoted inLewis'sForeign Sources of Modern English Versification, p. 89.)

The special form of refrain stanza appearing in the first of these foreign specimens (the Alleluia hymn form) is generally thought to have been the source of the "tail-rime stanza" illustrated in the other two specimens, and in the several pages which follow. The characteristic feature of this stanza is the presence of two short lines riming together and serving as "tails" to the first and second parts of the body of the stanza. The same name appears in all the languages: "versus caudati" in the mediæval Latin, "rime couée" in the French, and "Schweifreim" in modern German. It is easy to see, what the following specimens illustrate, how stanzas constructed on this fundamental principle might be varied greatly in particular forms, according to the number, length, and rime-arrangement of the longer lines.

Men may merci have, traytour not to save, for luf ne for awe,Atteynt of traytorie, suld haf no mercie, wiþ no maner lawe.

(Robert Manningof Brunne:Chronicle.ab. 1330.)

For Edward gode dedeÞe Baliol did him medea wikked bounte.Turne we ageyn to redeand on our geste to spedea Maddok þer left we.

(Ibid.)

Manning's chronicle was a translation of the French chronicle of Pierre de Langtoft. Although the translator designed to avoid the various complicated measures used in the original, and kept pretty closely to alexandrines (see p.254, below), in the passages here represented he followed the tail-rime of the original. In the first case the stanza form is not represented in the manuscript, though of course implicit in the rimes. The name of the stanza, "rime couée," appears very early in Manning's Prologue, in the famous passage in which he expressed his preference for metrical simplicity:

Als þai haf wrytenn and saydHaf I alle in myn Inglis layd,In symple speche as I couthe,That is lightest in mannes mouthe.I mad noght for no disours,Ne for no seggers no harpours,Bot for þe luf of symple mennThat strange Inglis cann not kenn.For many it ere that strange InglisIn ryme wate never what it is,And bot þai wist what it menteEllis me thoght it were alle shente.I made it not for to be praysed,Bot at þe lewed menn were aysed.If it were made in ryme couwee,Or in strangere or entrelace,Þat rede Inglis it ere inoweÞat couthe not haf coppled a kowe,Þat outhere in couwee or in bastonSom suld haf ben fordon,So þat fele men þat it herdeSuld not witte howe þat it ferde.... And forsoth I couth noghtSo strange Inglis as þai wroght,And menn besoght me many a tymeTo turne it bot in light ryme.þai sayd, if I in strange it turne,To here it manyon suld skurne.For it ere names fulle selcouthe,þat ere not used now in mouthe.And therfore for the comonalte,þat blythely wild listen to me,On light lange I it begann,For luf of the lewed mann.

I made it not for to be praysed,Bot at þe lewed menn were aysed.If it were made in ryme couwee,Or in strangere or entrelace,Þat rede Inglis it ere inoweÞat couthe not haf coppled a kowe,Þat outhere in couwee or in bastonSom suld haf ben fordon,So þat fele men þat it herdeSuld not witte howe þat it ferde.

... And forsoth I couth noghtSo strange Inglis as þai wroght,And menn besoght me many a tymeTo turne it bot in light ryme.þai sayd, if I in strange it turne,To here it manyon suld skurne.For it ere names fulle selcouthe,þat ere not used now in mouthe.And therfore for the comonalte,þat blythely wild listen to me,On light lange I it begann,For luf of the lewed mann.

(Hearne ed., vol. i. pp. xcix, c.)

Lines 15-22 may be paraphrased thus: "If it were made inrime couée, inrime strangere, orrime entrelacée, there are plenty of those who read English who could not have put the tail-verses together; so that either in the tail-verse or thebastonsome would have been confused, and many men that heard it would not know how it went." The "interlaced" (alternate) rime was a familiar form.Bastonseems usually to be an equivalent for "stanza" or "stave." It seems uncertain whether byrime strangereManning had in mind any particular form of stanza or rime-arrangement.

Stand wel, moder, under rode,Byholt þy sone wiþ glade mode;Blyþe, moder, myht þou be!Sone, hou shulde y blyþe stonde?Y se þin fet, y se þin hondeNayled to þe harde tre.

(Song from Harleian MS. 3253; Böddeker'sAltenglische Dichtungen, p. 206.)

Listeth, lordes, in good entent,And I wol telle verraymentOf mirthe and of solas;Al of a knyght was fair and gentIn bataille and in tourneyment,His name was sir Thopas ...An elf-queen wol I love, y-wis,For in this world no womman isWorthy to be my makeIn toune;Alle othere wommen I forsake,And to an elf-queen I me takeBy dale and eek by doune!

Listeth, lordes, in good entent,And I wol telle verraymentOf mirthe and of solas;Al of a knyght was fair and gentIn bataille and in tourneyment,His name was sir Thopas ...

An elf-queen wol I love, y-wis,For in this world no womman isWorthy to be my makeIn toune;Alle othere wommen I forsake,And to an elf-queen I me takeBy dale and eek by doune!

(Chaucer:Sir Thopas, fromCanterbury Tales. ab. 1385.)

The tail-rime stanza had become a favorite for the metrical romances of the fourteenth century; but Chaucer evidently saw its inappropriateness for long narrative poems, and ridiculed it—with certain other elements of the romances—in thisRime of Sir Thopas. The Host is made to interrupt the story:

"'Myn eres aken of thy drasty speche;Now swiche a rym the devel I beteche!This may wel be rym dogerel', quod he."

My patent pardouns, ye may se,Cum fra the Cane of Tartarei,Weill seald with oster schellis;Thocht ye have na contritioun,Ye sall have full remissioun,With help of buiks and bellis.

(Sir David Lindsay:Ane Satyre of the Three Estates.ab. 1540.)

Seinte Marie! levedi briht,Moder thou art of muchel miht,Quene in hevene of feire ble;Gabriel to the he lihte,Tho he brouhte al wid rihteThen holi gost to lihten in the.Godes word ful wel thou cnewe;Ful mildeliche thereto thou bewe,And saidest, "So it mote be!"Thi thone was studevast ant trewe;For the joye that to was newe,Levedi, thou have merci of me!

(Quinque Gaudia.In Mätzner'sAltenglische Sprachproben, vol. i. p. 51.)

Here the principle of the tail-rime is extended to four tail-verses. See also the specimen on p.111, below.

All, dear Nature's children sweet,Lie 'fore bride and bridegroom's feet,Blessing their sense!Not an angel of the air,Bird melodious or bird fair,Be absent hence.

(Song fromThe Two Noble Kinsmen, by Shakspere and Fletcher. pub. 1634.)

Fair stood the wind for France,When we our sails advance,Nor now to prove our chanceLonger not tarry;But put unto to the main,At Caux, the mouth of Seine,With all his martial train,Landed King Harry.

(Drayton:Agincourt.ab. 1600.)

I am a man of war and might,And know thus much, that I can fight,Whether I am i' th' wrong or right,Devoutly.No woman under heaven I fear,New oaths I can exactly swear,And forty healths my brains will bearMost stoutly.

(Sir John Suckling:A Soldier.ab. 1635.)

The stanzas that follow show various combinations and applications of the same principle—the use of shorter verses in connection with longer.

A wayle whyte ase whalles bon,A grein in golde þat goldly shon,A tortle þat min herte is on,In toune trewe;Hire gladshipe nes never gon,Whil y may glewe.

(Song from Harleian MS. 2253; Böddeker'sAltenglische Dichtungen, p. 161.)

Of on that is so fayr and briȝt,velut maris stella,Briȝter than the day is liȝt,parens et puella;Ic crie to the, thou se to me,Levedy, preye thi sone for me,tam pia,That ic mote come to theMaria.

(Hymn to the Virgin, from Egerton MS. 613. In Mätzner'sAltenglische Sprachproben, vol. i. p. 53.)

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