The light rippling melody of this stanza is due, in considerable measure, to its fine alliterative structure.
Tennyson likewise makes effective use of alliteration, as may be noted especially in the matchless lyrics interspersed throughout "The Princess." A single stanza will make this clear:
"The splendor falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story;
The long light shakes across the lakes
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying."
52. Stanzas. A stanza is a separate division of a poem, and contains two or more lines or verses. A stanza of two lines is called a couplet; of three lines, a triplet; of four lines, a quatrain. Tennyson's "Locksley Hall" is in two-line stanza:
"Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new;
That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do."
His "Two Voices" is in the triplet stanza:
"A still small voice spake unto me,
'Thou art so full of misery,
Were it not better not to be?'
"Then to the still small voice I said,
'Let me not cast in endless shade
What is so wonderfully made.'"
Numerous examples of the four-line stanza have already been given.