This Troilus, in gift of curtesie, With hauk on hond, and with a huge rout Of knightes, rode, and did her company, Passing all through the valley far about; And further would have ridden out of doubt. Full faine and woe was him to gone so sone; But turn he must, and it was eke to doen.--CHAUCER. This metre was common with the writers of the earlier part of Queen Elizabeth's reign. It admits of varieties according to the distribution of the first five rhymes. 10. _Ottava rima._--A metre with an Italian name, and borrowed from Italy, where it is used generally for narrative poetry. The Morgante Maggiore of Pulci, the Orlando Innamorato of Bojardo, the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto, the Gierusalemme Liberata of Tasso, are all written in this metre. Besides this, the two chief epics of Spain and Portugal respectively (the Auraucana and the Lusiados) are thus composed. Hence it is a form of poetry which is Continental rather than English, and naturalized rather than indigenous. The stanza consists of eight lines of heroics, the six first rhyming alternately, the last two in succession. Arrived there, a prodigious noise he hears, Which suddenly along the forest spread; Whereat from out his quiver he prepares An arrow for his bow, and lifts his head; And, lo! a monstrous herd of swine appears, And onward rushes with tempestuous tread, And to the fountain's brink precisely pours, So that the giant's join'd by all the boars. _Morgante Maggiore_ (LD. BYRON'S _Translation_.) 11. _Terza rima._--Like the last, borrowed both in name and nature from the Italian, and scarcely yet naturalized in England. The Spirit of the fervent days of old, When words were things that came to pass, and Thought Flash'd o'er the future, bidding men behold Their children's children's doom already brought Forth from the abyss of Time which is to be, The chaos of events where lie half-wrought Shapes that must undergo mortality: What the great seers of Israel wore within, That Spirit was on them and is on me: And if, Cassandra-like, amidst the din Of conflicts, none will hear, or hearing heed This voice from out the wilderness, the sin Be theirs, and my own feelings be my meed, The only guerdon I have ever known. 12. _Alexandrines._--Six measures, x a, generally (perhaps always) with rhyme. The name is said to be taken from the fact that early romances upon the deeds of Alexander of Macedon, of great popularity, were written in this metre. One of the longest poems in the English language is in the Alexandrines, viz. Drayton's Poly-olbion, quoted above. 13. _Spenserian stanza._--A stanza consisting of nine lines, the first eight heroics, the last an Alexandrine.