Lord, in thine anger do not reprehend me, Nor in thy hot displeasure me correct; Pity me, Lord, for I am much deject, And very weak and faint; heal and amend me. (MILTON: _Psalm vi._ 1653.) Away, those cloudy looks, that lab'ring sigh, The peevish offspring of a sickly hour! Nor meanly thus complain of fortune's power, When the blind gamester throws a luckless die. (COLERIDGE: _To a Friend._ ab. 1795.) Twelve struck. That sound, by dwindling years Heard in each hour, crept off; and then The ruffled silence spread again, Like water that a pebble stirs. (ROSSETTI: _My Sister's Sleep._ 1850.) I hold it true, whate'er befall; I feel it when I sorrow most; 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. (TENNYSON: _In Memoriam_, xxvii. 1850.) Sweet after showers, ambrosial air, That rollest from the gorgeous gloom Of evening over brake and bloom And meadow, slowly breathing bare The round of space, and rapt below Thro' all the dewy-tasselled wood, And shadowing down the horned flood In ripples, fan my brows and blow The fever from my cheek, and sigh The full new life that feeds thy breath Throughout my frame, till Doubt and Death, Ill brethren, let the fancy fly From belt to belt of crimson seas On leagues of odor streaming far, To where in yonder orient star A hundred spirits whisper "Peace." (TENNYSON: _ibid._, lxxxiv.) This stanza (_abba_ in four-stress iambics) is commonly known as the "_In Memoriam_ stanza," from its familiar use by Tennyson. Tennyson is indeed said to have invented it for his own use, not knowing of its earlier appearance in the works of Jonson and Rossetti. Professor Corson has an interesting passage on the poetic quality of the stanza: "By the rhyme-scheme of the quatrain, the terminal rhyme-emphasis of the stanza is reduced, the second and third verses being most closely braced by the rhyme. The stanza is thus admirably adapted to that sweet continuity of flow, free from abrupt checks, demanded by the spiritualized sorrow which it bears along. Alternate rhyme would have wrought an entire change in the tone of the poem. To be assured of this, one should read, aloud of course, all the stanzas whose first and second, or third and fourth, verses admit of being transposed without affecting the sense. By such transposition, the rhymes are made alternate, and the concluding rhymes more emphatic." Compare the stanza quoted above from section xxvii. with the transposed form: "I feel it when I sorrow most; I hold it true, whate'er befall; 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all."