Imatges de pàgina
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§ 232. Stanzas of Eight and Twelve Lines. The stanzas a ba ba ba b (§ 171), a b a b a b a b bebe, or a babababcded (§ 173), so common in ME., are rare in NE.; the stanza a babbcbc (§ 172. 195) is also rare; cp. § 238. More often we find eight-line stanzas with new rimes in the second half, both anisometrical (§ 229) and isometrical, e.g. a babcdc dg, Surrey p. 24 f.:

The fire it can not freze:

For it is not his kinde,
Nor true loue cannot lese

The constance of the minde,

Yet as sone shall the fire

Want heat to blaze and burn,

As I in such desire

Haue once a thought to turne,

also a baba ca cg in Wyatt, pp. 50. 66, and a b
abcded, e.g. Burns, To Mary in Heaven:
That sacred hour can I forget?

Can I forget the hallow'd grove,
Where by the winding Ayr we met,
To live one day of parting love?
Eternity will not efface

Those records dear of transports past;

Thy image at our last embrace

Ah! little thought we 'twas our last.

§ 233. The Tail-rime Stanza.

The Tail-rime stanzas of 12 and 16 lines, so common in ME., are very rare in NE.; but tailrime stanzas of 6 and 8 lines are often found in Moralities in the sixteenth century and also later in lyrical poetry.

The NE. tail-rime stanzas vary more than those of ME., since the tail-rime lines are sometimes shorter, sometimes longer than the couplets. Further the couplets often have masculine endings and the tail-rime lines feminine endings, or vice versa.

Of the six line tail-rime stanzas the most common in NE. is the anisometrical a a, b, c c bg, e.g.: It was upon a holiday,

When shepheardes groomes han leave to play,
I cast to goe a shooting,

Long wandring up and downe the land,

With bow and bolts in either hand,

For birds in bushes tooting etc.

(Spenser, The Shepheardes Calendar, March.)

or a a b c c b2:

O world! so few the years we live,

Would that the life that thou dost give

Were life indeed!

Alas! thy sorrows fall so fast,

Our happiest hour is when at last

The soul is freed.

(Longfellow, Coplas de Manrique.)

The form a a, b, c c bg, which can be derived from common metre with internal rime, is also much used (§ 229); cp. e.g.:

[blocks in formation]

As cometh suddenly.

Did all the world dismay.

(Wigglesworth, The Day of Doom 1662.)

Drayton's Nymphidia, The Court of Fairy is in an eight-line tail-rime stanza a a a, b, c c c bg; cp.: Old Chaucer doth of Topas tell,

Mad Rablais of Pantagruel,

A later third of Dowsabel,

With such poor trifles playing:
Others the like have labour'd at,

Some of this thing, and some of that,
And many of they know not what,

But that they must be saying.

Wordsworth uses the same stanza in To the Green Linnet; he uses a a a b c c c b2 in To a Daisy:

Sweet Flower! for by that name at last
When all my reveries are past

I call thee, and to that cleave fast,

Sweet silent Creature!

That breath'st with me in sun and air,
Do thou, as thou art wont, repair
My heart with gladness, and a share
Of thy meek nature!

Tennyson adds a verse to the first part of this stanza for his Lady of Shalott (a a a a, b, c C C1 bg). In Swinburne's Tale of Balen the first b verse has four feet, aa aabccc, bg; cp.:

In hawthorn-time the heart grows light,
The world is sweet in round and sight,
Glad thoughts and birds take flower and flight,
The heather kindles toward the light,

The whin is frankincense and flame.

And be it for strife or be it for love

The falcon quickens as the dove

When earth is touched from heaven above
With joy that knows no name.

Swinburne's Armada VII (cp. § 221), which has a stanza consisting of three trochaic verses of eight feet with internal rime, can also be looked on as a tripartite nine-line tail-rime stanza a a, b, c c2 b1 d d2 b.

§ 234. Variations of the Tail-rime Stanza.

By a combination of couplets or alternate rime with tail-rime there arise further variations of tailrime stanza, e.g. the ten-line stanza a bз а bg ccdee, ds of Gray's Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College:

Ye distant spires, ye antique towers
That crown the watery glade,
Where grateful Science still adores
Her Henry's holy shade;

And ye, that from the stately brow
Of Windsor's heights_th'expanse below
Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey,

Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among
Wanders the hoary Thames along

His silver-winding way.

The Scotch poet Montgomerie uses a stanza a a b c c bg dede, ff1 g h h1 gз in his The Cherrie and the Slae; cp. 1. 309 ff.:

With sober pace I did approche

Hard to the riuer and the roche;
Quhairof I spak befoir;

Quhais running sic a murmure maid,
That to the sey it softlie slaid:
The craig was high and schoir:
Than pleasur did me so prouok

Perforce thair to repaire,
Betwix the riuer and the rok,

Quhair Hope grew with Dispaire;

A trie than, I sie than,

Of Cherries in the braes:

Belaw, to, I saw, to,

Ane buss of bitter Slaes.

Burns uses the same stanza with great skill in some poems; cp. Despondency:

Oppress'd with grief, oppress'd with care,

A burden more than I can bear,

I set me down and sigh;
O life! thou art a galling load,
Along a rough, a weary road,
To wretches such as I!
Dim-backward as I cast my view,
What sick'ning scenes appear!
What sorrows yet may pierce me thro',
Too justly I may fear!

Still caring, despairing,

Must be my bitter doom;

My woes here shall close ne'er,
But with the closing tomb!

§ 235. Burns' Stanza (a a a, b, а b2).

2

Burns is very fond of the above stanza, which one can look on as a variation of the tail-rime stanza. It is found in ME. in the romance of Octovian and in other poems (§ 180). It is frequently found in Scotch poetry, and Burns uses it in some 50 poems; cp.:

But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,

In proving foresight may be vain:

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