Queén and húntress, cháste and faír, Nów the sún is laíd to sléep, Seated ín thy sílver chaír, Státe in wónted spléndour keép. Hésperús invókes thy líght, Góddess, éxquisítely bríght.--BEN JONSON. In all these lines the last measure is deficient in a syllable, yet the deficiency is allowable, because each measure is the last one of the line. The formula for expressing _faír_, _sléep_, _chaír_, &c. is not a, but rather a x followed by the _minus_ sign (-), or a x-. A little consideration will show that amongst the English measures, x a and x x a naturally form single, a x and x a x double, and a x x treble rhymes. § 540. The chief metres in English are of the formula x a. It is only a few that are known by fixed names. These are as follows:-- 1. _Gay's stanza._--Lines of three measures, x a, with alternate rhymes. The odd (i.e. the 1st and 3rd) rhymes double. 'Twas when the seas were roaring With hollow blasts of wind, A damsel lay deploring, All on a rock reclined. 2. _Common octosyllabics._--Four measures, x a, with rhyme, and (unless the rhymes be double) eight syllables (_octo syllabæ_).--Butler's Hudibras, Scott's poems, The Giaour, and other poems of Lord Byron. 3. _Elegiac octosyllabics_.--Same as the last, except that the rhymes are regularly alternate, and the verses arranged in stanzas. And on her lover's arm she leant, And round her waist she felt it fold, And far across the hills they went, In that new world which now is old: Across the hills and far away, Beyond their utmost purple rim, And deep into the dying day The happy princess follow'd him.--TENNYSON. 4. _Octosyllabic triplets._--Three rhymes in succession. Generally arranged as stanzas. I blest them, and they wander'd on; I spoke, but answer came there none; The dull and bitter voice was gone.--TENNYSON. 5. _Blank verse._--Five measures, x a, without rhyme, Paradise Lost, Young's Night Thoughts, Cowper's Task. 6. _Heroic couplets._--Five measures, x a, with pairs of rhymes. Chaucer, Denham, Dryden, Waller, Pope, Goldsmith, Cowper, Byron, Moore, Shelley, &c. This is the common metre for narrative, didactic, and descriptive poetry. 7. _Heroic triplets._--Five measures, x a. Three rhymes in succession. Arranged in stanzas. This metre is sometimes interposed among heroic couplets. 8. _Elegiacs._--Five measures, x a; with regularly alternate rhymes, and arranged in stanzas. The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herds wind slowly o'er the lea, The ploughman homewards plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me.--GRAY. 9. _Rhymes royal._--Seven lines of heroics, with the last two rhymes in succession, and the first five recurring at intervals.