This form, although originally found in Provençal like the others of the group, has been more used in Italy than in France, and, as the English form of the word indicates, was introduced into England under Italian influence. It was invented at the end of the thirteenth century, by the troubadour Arnaut Daniel, celebrated in the following specimen. The common form of the sestina has six stanzas of six lines each, with a tercet at the end. There is usually no rime, but the stanzas are based on six end-words, which are the same in all stanzas; in the tercet three of these words are used in the middle of the lines, and three at the ends. The order of the end-words changes in each stanza according to a complex system: thus (in the common modern form) if the end-words of the first stanza be represented by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, the order in the second stanza will be 6, 1, 5, 2, 4, 3; in the third, 3, 6, 4, 1, 2, 5; in the fourth, 5, 3, 2, 6, 1, 4; in the fifth, 4, 5, 1, 3, 6, 2; in the sixth, 2, 4, 6, 5, 3, 1. Sometimes the end-words also rime by twos and threes. In fair Provence, the land of lute and rose, Arnaut, great master of the lore of love, First wrought sestines to win his lady's heart; For she was deaf when simpler staves he sang, And for her sake he broke the bonds of rhyme, And in this subtler measure hid his woe. "Harsh be my lines," cried Arnaut, "harsh the woe, My lady, that enthroned and cruel rose, Inflicts on him that made her live in rhyme!" But through the metre spake the voice of Love, And like a wildwood nightingale he sang Who thought in crabbed lays to ease his heart. It is not told if her untoward heart Was melted by her poet's lyric woe, Or if in vain so amorously he sang. Perchance through crowd of dark conceits he rose To nobler heights of philosophic love, And crowned his later years with sterner rhyme. This thing alone we know: the triple rhyme Of him who bared his vast and passionate heart To all the crossing flames of hate and love, Wears in the midst of all its storm and woe-- As some loud morn of March may bear a rose-- The impress of a song that Arnaut sang. "Smith of his mother-tongue," the Frenchman sang Of Lancelot and of Galahad, the rhyme That beat so bloodlike at its core of rose, It stirred the sweet Francesca's gentle heart To take that kiss that brought her so much woe, And sealed in fire her martyrdom of love. And Dante, full of her immortal love, Stayed his drear song, and softly, fondly sang As though his voice broke with that weight of woe; And to this day we think of Arnaut's rhyme, Whenever pity at the laboring heart On fair Francesca's memory drops the rose. Ah! sovereign Love, forgive this weaker rhyme! The men of old who sang were great at heart, Yet have we too known woe, and worn thy rose. (EDMUND GOSSE: _Sestina._)