A History of English VersificationSchipper, J. (Jakob)
History
A History of English Versification
Schipper, J. (Jakob)
English language -- Versification; English poetry -- History and criticism
_For-sóþ =f=lípers,
And alle =f=áls =f=láters
I réde, sone, þou =f=lé;
For þen sálle na gode mán,
Þat any góde lare cán,
Þár-fore blame þé._
In the same stanza _The Feest_ (Hazlitt, _Remains_, iii. 93) is written.
Still more frequently such lines were used for extended
tail-rhyme-stanzas rhyming on the scheme _a a a b c c c b d d d b e e e
b_, as e.g. in a poem, _The Enemies of Mankind_, of the beginning of
the fourteenth century, published by Kölbing (_Engl. Studien_, ix. 440
ff.).
The first stanza runs as follows:
_Þe =s=ìker =s=óþe who so =s=éys,
Wiþ =d=ìol =d=réye we our =d=áys
And =w=àlk máni =w=il =w=áys
As =w=ándrand =w=íȝtes.
Al our =g=ámes ous a=g=ás,
So mani =t=énes on =t=ás
Þurch =f=ónding of =f=ele =f=ás,
Þat =f=ást wiþ ous =f=íȝtes.
Our =f=lèsche is =f=óuled wiþ þe =f=énd;
Þer we =f=índe a =f=als =f=rénde:
Þei þai =h=éuen vp her =h=énde,
Þai no =h=óld nouȝt her =h=íȝtes.
Þis er =þ=ré, þat er =þ=rá,
Ȝete þe =f=érþ is our =f=á,
=D=èþ, þat =d=érieþ ous swá
And =d=íolely ous =d=íȝtes._
Here, again, the difference between the lines on the pattern of the
first hemistich of the long line, which form the body of the stanza (_a
a a, b b b, c c c, d d d_), and those on the pattern of the second
hemistich used as tail-rhyme lines (_b, b, b, b_) is plainly
recognizable.
The same is the case in other poems written in this form of stanza, as
e.g. in the Metrical Romances, _Sir Perceval_, _Sir Degrevant_
(Halliwell, _Thornton Romances_, Camden Society, 1844, pp. 1, 177) and
others; cf. Luick, _Anglia_, xii, pp. 440ff., and Paul's _Grundriss_, ii
a, p. 1016. But in these later works, one of the latest of which
probably is the poem _The Droichis Part of the Play_, possibly by Dunbar
(Laing, ii. 37; Small, ii. 314; Schipper, 190), the two-beat lines are
frequently intermingled and blended with even-beat lines, which from the
beginning of the fifth stanza onward completely take the place of the
two-beat lines in the last-mentioned poem. Likewise in the
'Bob-wheel-staves', i.e. stanzas of the structure of those
sixteenth-century stanzas quoted above (§§ 60, 61), the _cauda_, as is
expressly stated by King James VI in his _Revlis and Cavtelis_, is
written in even-beat lines of four and three measures, though the main
part of the stanza (the _frons_) is composed in four-beat
rhyming-alliterative lines (cf. Luick, _Anglia_, xii, P. 444).
§ =66.= In the contemporary =Dramatic Poetry= this mixture of four-beat
(or two-beat) alliterative lines with lines of even measures is still
more frequent, and may be used either strophically or otherwise.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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