A History of English VersificationSchipper, J. (Jakob)
History
A History of English Versification
Schipper, J. (Jakob)
English language -- Versification; English poetry -- History and criticism
More frequent in Modern English, on the other hand, is a variety of this
stanza with two-foot tail-verses on the scheme _a a a₄ b₂ a₄ b₂_; it is
especially common in Ramsay and Fergusson, and occurs in several poems
of Burns, e.g. in his _Scotch Drink_ (p. 6):
_Let other Poets raise a fracas
'Bout vines, an' wines, an' drunken Bacchus,
An' crabbit names an' stories wrack us,
An' grate our lug,
I sing the juice Scotch bear can mak us,
In glass or jug._
The same form of stanza is used by Wordsworth and by M. Arnold in his
poem _Kaiser Dead_ (p. 495).
The same stanza sometimes occurs with the order of the parts inverted
like _a₄ b₃ a a a₄ b₃_, e.g. in Longfellow's _Voices of the Night_ (p.
40).
Other unequal-membered varieties of the anisometrical tail-rhyme stanza
correspond to _a a₃ b₅ a a₅ b₆_ (cf. the chapter on the Spenserian
stanza and its imitations), _a a b c c₄ b₃_ (M. Arnold, _Horatian Echo_,
p. 47), _a a b c c₃ b₅_, _a₅ a₃ b₅ c c b₅_, _a₄ a₂ b₄ c₂ c₅ b₄_, _a₄ b₃
a c c₄ b₃_ (entwined _frons_), _a a₄ b₃ c₃ b₄ c₅_ (entwined _cauda_).
For examples see _Metrik_, ii, § 343.
Here again we must mention stanzas which in their structure are
influenced by the tail-rhyme stanza and are formed on the scheme _a b c
a b c_; of these we have several examples in G. Herbert, on the scheme
_a b c₅ a b₄ c₅_, e.g. in _Magdalena_ (p. 183):
_When blessed Marie wip'd her Saviour's feet,
(Whose precepts she had trampled on before)
And wore them for a jewell on her head,
Shewing his steps should be the street,
Wherein she thenceforth evermore
With pensive humblenesse would live and tread._
Other stanzas of his correspond to _a₅ b₄ c₃ c₄ b₃ a₅_, _a₃ b₅ c₄ c₄ b₅
a₃_, &c. In Moore we have a similar stanza: _a b₄ c₂ b a₄ c₂_ which is
unequal-membered on account of the arrangement of rhyme (cf. _Metrik_,
ii, § 344). An unusual form of stanza, which may also be classed under
this head, occurs in M. Arnold's _Human Life_ (p. 40), its formula being
_a₃ b₄ c a c b₅_.
§ =262. A stanza of seven lines= is used in Dunbar's poem _The
Merchants of Edinborough_, formed on the scheme _a a a b₄ B₂ a₄ B₄_; it
is very interesting on account of the duplication of the refrain-verses
(_B₂_, _B₄_). Apart from the first short refrain-verse the arrangement
of rhymes is the same as it is in the entwined tail-rhyme stanza:
_Quhy will ȝe, merchantis of renoun,
Lat Edinburgh, ȝour nobill toun,
For laik of reformatioun
The commone proffeitt tyne and fame?
Think ȝe noht schame,
That onie other regioun
Sall with dishonour hurt ȝour name!_
The Modern English stanzas also mostly bear a greater or less
resemblance to the tail-rhyme stanza. This relationship is evident in a
stanza like _a a₄ b₃ c c c₄ b₃_, used in Wordsworth, _To the Daisy_
(iii. 42):
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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