It may fairly be assumed that the structure of the Alexandrine (which, according to French models, might have either a masculine or a feminine ending) may have greatly furthered the intrusion of monosyllabic feet into the Septenary verse, although the gradual decay of the final inflexions may likewise have contributed to this end. For the rest, all the rhythmic licences of the Septenary occurring in the _Moral Ode_ are also to be met with here; as, for instance, the suppression of the anacrusis in the first hemistich of l. 4 of the passage quoted, and in the second of l. 2, and the omission of the unaccented syllable in the second hemistich of the fourth line, the inversion of accent and disyllabic thesis in the first hemistich of the third line, and other licences, such as the anapaestic beginning of the line, &c., in other places in these poems (cf. _Metrik_, i, p. 246). § =139.= In lyrical poems of this time and in later popular ballad poetry the Septenary is employed in another manner, namely, in four-lined stanzas of four- and three-foot verse, rhyming crosswise, each of which must be looked on as consisting of pairs of Septenaries with middle rhyme inserted (interlaced rhyme), as is clearly shown by the Latin models of these metrical forms quoted above (p. 192). Latin and English lines are thus found connected, so as to form a stanza, in a poem of the fifteenth century: _Fréeres, fréeres, wó ȝe bé! Mínistrí malórum, For mány a mánnes sóule bringe ȝé Ad póenas ínfernórum._ Political Poems, ii. 249. In many lyrical poems of the older period some stanzas rhyme in long lines, others rhyme in short lines, which shows the gradual genesis of the short-lined metre, rhyming throughout. Thus, in the poem in Wright's _Spec. of Lyr. P._, p. 90, the opening verses of the first stanza rhyme in long lines: _My déþ y lóue, my lýf ich háte, | fór a léuedy shéne, Héo is bríht so daíes líht, | þat ís on mé wel séne_, whereas those of the second rhyme in short lines: _Sórewe and sýke and dréri mód | býndeþ mé so fáste, Þát y wéne to wálke wód, | ȝef hít me léngore láste._ Instances of this kind are frequent; but the four lines of the single stanzas are never completely rhymed throughout as short-lines, as, for instance, is the case in the opening parts or 'frontes' of the stanzas of the poems in Wright's _Spec. of Lyr. P._, pp. 27 and 83, the lines of which are far more regularly constructed. The rhymes are in these compositions still generally disyllabic. The metrical structure of the old ballads _The Battle of Otterborn_ and _Chevy Chase_ is similar to that of the poem just quoted. In those ballads some original long lines are provided with middle rhyme, others not, so that the stanzas partly rhyme according to the formula _a b c b_, partly according to the formula _a b a b_. The versification is, moreover, very uneven, and the endings are, as a rule, if not without exception, masculine: