Other kinds of verse can also of course form rimed couplets (cp. § 228). Stanzas of triplets are more common than stanzas of couplets; e.g.: And what's a Life? a weary pilgrimage, (Francis Quarles, The Shortness of Life.) (The Golden Treasury, Oxford Edition, Nr. 329.) The end of a stanza a a a is made more prominent when a fourth line is added as a refrain, e.g.: On Linden, when the sun was low, Of Iser, rolling rapidly. (Campbell, Hohenlinden.) The twentieth year is wellnigh past (Cowper, To Mary Unwin.) Now simmer blinks on flowery braes, (Burns, The Birks of Aberfeldy.) In Tennyson's Daisy the third verse does not rime (a a ba1): What more? we took our last adieu, And up the snowy Splugen drew, But ere we reach'd the highest summit Fitz Gerald's Rubaiyát of Omar Khayyám (cp. § 150, 5), and Swinburne's Laus Veneris are similar, but Swinburne rimes the third verses of every two consecutive stanzas, so that really an eight-line stanza a abaccb c, arises; cp. ll. 1 ff.: Asleep or waking is it? for her neck Kissed over close, wears yet a purple speck Wherein the pained blood falters and goes out; Soft, and stung softly fairer for a fleck. But though my lips shut sucking on the place, There is no vein at work upon her face; Her eyelids are so peaceable, no doubt Deep sleep has warmed her blood through all its ways. $ 228. Poulter's Measure. Poulter's Measure was much used in the sixteenth century. It is a rimed couplet consisting of an alexandrine (12 syllables) and a septenary (14 syllables). It is so called "because the poulterer gives twelve for one dozen and fourteen for another". This metre was used by Wyatt, Surrey and others. It is found in sixteenth century drama and in a long narrative poem, Arthur Brooke's Romeus and Juliet (1562), the chief source of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet; cp. 2337 ff.: The nurse departed once, the chamber door shut close by her. The sleepy mixture made, fair Juliet doth it hide and lying doubtfully, Whilst honest love did strive with dread of deadly pain, With hands y-wrung, and weeping eyes, thus gan she to complain: 'What, is there any one, beneath the heavens high, For lo, the world for me hath nothing else to find, mind; Since that the cruel cause of my unhappiness This couplet ceased to be used but Macaulay revives it; in Virginia the lines are printed as long lines, in Horatius we have ag bg c4 bg dg eg f4 08, cp. Horatius XVI: Now, from the rock Tarpeian, Could the wan burghers spy The Fathers of the City, They sat all night and day, For every hour some horseman came Occasionally an alexandrine is found in place of a septenary, or the stanza is extended to 9-12 lines. NOTE. Another unlike rimed couplet as a b1 b2 etc. is used by Robert Herrick in A Thanksgiving for his House (Chambers' Cyclopaedia of Engl. Lit. I, 565): Lord, thou hast given me a cell Wherein to dwell, A little house whose humble roof Is weatherproof; Under the spars of which I lie $229. Common Metre. (Ballad Stanza.) The four-line anisometrical stanza a bз c1 bз (§ 170), generally called common metre which results from splitting a septenary rimed couplet, was much used in NE. in popular ballads and similar poems; e.g.: In somer when the shawes be shene And leves be large and long, Hit is full mery in feyre foreste To here the foulys song. (Robin Hood and the Monk.) John Gilpin was a citizen Of credit and renown, A train-band captain eke was he Of famous London town. (Cowper, John Gilpin.) All in a hot and copper sky, The bloody Sun, at noon, Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean. Water, water, everywhere, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink. (Coleridge, The Ancient Mariner.) In The Ancient Mariner we also find many variations, e.g. a, b, c c, b, and a, b, c b ̧ d1 bз · Beyond the shadow of the ship I watched the water-snakes: They moved in tracks of shining white, O happy living things! no tongue A spring of love gushed from my heart, Sure my kind saint took pity on me, |