THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY FORMS
1. Poetry. (a) Meter. The most interesting feature of this period is the development of the modern system of rhymed meters, which displaced the Old English alliterative measures. Between the Old English poems of Cynewulf (about 950) and the Middle English Brut (about 1205) there is a considerable gap both in time and in development. This gap is only slightly bridged by the few pieces which we proceed to quote.
A quatrain dated at about 1100 is as follows:
Merrie sungen the muneches binnen Ely,
Tha Cnut chining[3] reu[4] ther by;
“Roweth, cnichtes, noer the land,
And here we thes muneches sang.”
In this example we have two rough couplets. The first pair rhyme, and in the second pair there is a fair example of assonance. The meter, as far as it exists at all, is a cross between octosyllables and decasyllables.
A few brief fragments by Godric, who died in 1170, carry the process still further. The following lines may be taken as typical:
Sainte Nicholaes, Godes druth,