If I | should write rash|ly what comes | in my train
It might | be such mat|ter as likes | you not best,
And ra|ther I would | great sor|row sustain
Than not | to fulfil | your law|ful request.
(c) Mary Ambree (c. 1584):
[When] cap|tains coura|geous whom death | could [not] daunt
[Did march | to the siege of] the ci|ty of Gaunt,
They mus|tered their sol|diers by two | and by three,
And the fore|most in bat|tle was Ma|ry Ambree.
(Percy patched the bracketed words (his copy being evidently corrupt) in lines 1 and 2. But 3 and 4 are exactly as in the folio; and their anapæstic base is quite clear. At the same time, it is worth remarking that these early lines are apt, frequently though not regularly, to buttress their start on a dissyllabic foot.)
XXV. The Enjambed Heroic Couplet (1580-1660)
(a) Spenser.
The very opening of Mother Hubberd's Tale (1591), quoted above (p. [62]) in its stopped aspect, shows the way to enjambment:
It was | the month | in which | the right|eous Maid,
That for | disdain | of sin|ful world's | upbraid,
Fled back | to heaven.
And we have, further, an instance as shocking to "regular" prosodists as anything in the seventeenth century:
Whilome, | said she, | before | the world | was civil,
The Fox | and th' Ape, | dislik|ing of | their evil
And hard | estate.