(Le Bone Florence of Rome, 778-783.)
The plain form, as Chaucer, of malice prepense, showed in the above, is particularly liable to sing-song effect.
IX. Early Middle English Period
Miscellaneous Stanzas.
(a) A very considerable number of these were introduced, sometimes no doubt by direct imitation of French or (as in the case of the "Burns-metre,"[34]) Provençal originals, sometimes by the ingenuity of the individual poet, working on the plastic material of the blended language, according to the new metrical foot-system. They all scan easily by this, as may be seen in a stanza of Tristrem, one of the Harleian Lyrics, and a "Burns stanza" from the York Plays; while anapæstic substitution, amounting to something like "triple time" as a whole, appears in the Hampolian extract.
The king | had a douh|ter dere,
That mai|den Y|sonde hight,
That gle | was lef | to here
And romaun|ce to rede | aright.
Sir Tram|tris hir | gan lere,
Tho, | with al | his might,
What al|le poin|tès were
To se | the sothe |in sight,
To say,
In Yr|lond nas | no knight,
With Y|sonde | durst play.
(Sir Tristrem, 1255-63.)
(Three-foot iambic with single-foot "bob." All final e's sounded or elided. One monosyllabic, and two or three trisyllabic, substitutions.)
Bytuen|e Mershe | ant A|veril
when spray bigin|neth to springe,
The lut|el foul | hath hi|re wyl
on hy|re lud | to synge;
Ich lib|be in | love-|longinge
For sem | lokest | of al|le thynge,
He may | me | blis|se bringe,
icham | in hire | baundoun.
An hen|dy hap | ichab|be y-hent,
Ichot | from hevene | it is | me sent,
From alle | wymmen | mi love | is lent
ant lyht | on A|lysoun.
(Alison, Harleian MS. p. 27, ed. Wright.)