§ =230. Two-line stanzas.= The simplest bipartite equal-membered stanza is that of two isometrical verses only. In the Northern English translation of the Psalms (_Surtees Society_, vols. xvi and xix) we find, for the most part, two-line stanzas of four-foot verses rhyming in couplets, occasionally alternating with stanzas of four, six, eight, or more lines. In Middle English poetry, however, this form was generally used for longer poems that were not arranged in stanzas. Although it would be possible to divide some of these (e.g. the _Moral Ode_), either throughout or in certain parts, into bipartite stanzas, there is no reason to suppose that any strophic arrangement was intended. In Modern English, on the other hand, such an arrangement is often intentional, as in R. Browning, _The Boy and the Angel_ (iv. 158), a poem of four-foot trochaic verses: _Morning, evening, noon and night 'Praise God!' sang Theocrite._ _Then to his poor trade he turned, Whereby the daily meal was earned._ Similar stanzas in other metres occur in Longfellow, Tennyson, Thackeray, Rossetti, &c.; among them we find e.g. eight-foot trochaic and iambic-anapaestic verses (cf. _Metrik_, ii, § 3). § =231.= More frequently we find =four-line stanzas=, consisting of couplets. In Middle English lyric poetry such stanzas of two short couplets are occasionally met with as early as in the _Surtees Psalms_, but they occur more frequently in Modern English, e.g. in M. Arnold, _Urania_ (p. 217), and in Carew, e.g. _The Inquiry_ (Poets, iii): _Amongst the myrtles as I walk'd, Love and my sighs thus intertalk'd: 'Tell me,' said I, in deep distress, 'Where I may find my shepherdess.'_ Regular alternation of masculine and feminine rhymes is very rarely found in this simple stanza (or indeed in any Middle English stanzas); it is, properly speaking, only a series of rhyming couplets with a stop after every fourth line. This stanza is very popular, as are also various analogous four-line stanzas in other metres. One of these is the quatrain of four-foot trochaic verses, as used by M. Arnold in _The Last Word_, and by Milton, e.g. in _Psalm CXXXVI_, where the two last lines form the refrain, so that the strophic arrangement is more distinctly marked. Stanzas of four-foot iambic-anapaestic lines we find e.g. in Moore, '_Tis the last Rose of Summer_, and similar stanzas of five-foot iambic verses in Cowper, pp. 359, 410; M. Arnold, _Self-Dependence_ (last stanza). Less common are the quatrains of four-foot dactylic lines, of three-foot iambic-anapaestic lines, of six-foot iambic and trochaic lines, of seven-foot iambic lines, and of eight-foot trochaic lines. But specimens of each of these varieties are occasionally met with (cf. _Metrik_, ii, § 261).