Ritson’s taste actually led him, in comparing the above two first verses, to prefer the latter.
Or again we might contrast Sir Patrick Spence—
‘The King sits in Dumferling towne
Drinking the blude reid wine:
To sail this ship of mine?”’
with the Children in the Wood:—
‘Now ponder well, you parents deare,
These wordes, which I shall write;
A doleful story you shall heare,
In time brought forth to light.’