By Coleridge and Byron this metre was used in the same way as by Wyatt, viz. intermixed with regular four-foot verse according to the subject, the four-beat iambic-anapaestic rhythm for livelier passages, the pure iambic for passages of narration and reflecti—. Byron’s Prisoner of Chillon and his Siege of Corinth are good specimens of this kind of metre.[118] On the other hand the regular four-foot rhythm, as will be shown below, if it is of a looser structure, develops into a kind of verse similar to the iambic-anapaestic rhythm—an additional reason for their existing side by side often in one poem.
A few variations of this metre remain to be mentioned, which occur as early as Tusser. The first variety arises from interlaced rhyme, by which the two four-beat verses are broken up into four two-beat verses rhyming in the order a b a b.
If húsbandry brággeth
To gó with the bést,
Good húsbandry bággeth
Up góld in his chést.
On the model of these stanzas others were afterwards formed by Tusser consisting of three-beat verses of the same rhythm. The same verse was used for eight-line stanzas rhyming a b a b c d c d by Nicholas Rowe, Shenstone, Cowper, and in later times by Thackeray in one of his burlesque poems (Malony’s Lament in Ballads, the Rose and the Ring, &c., p. 225). For examples of these variations see the sections treating of the iambic-anapaestic verses of three and two measures.
§ 73. In modern times a few attempts have been made to revive the old four-beat alliterative line without rhyme, but also without a regular use of alliteration. These attempts, however, have never become popular.
The following passage from William Morris’s dramatic poem Love is enough may give an idea of the structure of this kind of verse: