[CHAPTER VII]
RECAPITULATION OR SUMMARY VIEW OF STAGES OF ENGLISH PROSODY
I. Old English Period
Prosody rhythmical, not metrical; determined exclusively by alliteration and accent. Combinations of accented and unaccented syllables perhaps classifiable, but seldom, if ever, reducible to any combination corresponding to the flow of later Middle and Modern English verse, though the principle (of syllabic irregularity in corresponding lines) survives as the most important basis of that verse itself. Rhyme, except in the piece specially entitled "Rhyming Poem" and other very late examples, practically non-existent; the instances collected from other places being very few and quite possibly accidental.
II. Before or very soon after 1200
Earliest Middle English Period.
No pure and unmixed alliterative-accentual verse of the old kind, but a choice between pure syllabic metre of iambic type (Ormulum), less regular but clearly metrical (i.e. "foot-measured") verse, iambic or trochaic (Paternoster, Moral Ode, etc.), and singular mixtures of the alliterative kind (badly done), and the metrical kind (sometimes done rather better) (Layamon, Proverbs of Alfred).
III. Middle and Later Thirteenth Century
Second Early Middle English Period.
The metrifying process going on, with stronger emphasising of the metrical character and almost complete discarding of the alliterative (King Horn, late in the century, has sometimes been claimed as an exception, but without good reason). Definite forms emerge: the two great kinds of octosyllabic couplet—more strictly syllabic (Owl and Nightingale), or less so (Genesis and Exodus); the fifteener-fourteener or seven-foot iambic (Robert of Gloucester); the rime couée or "Romance-six" (Proverbs of Hendyng). Of pure alliterative verse there is no trace whatever.