sýððan hēo éarhfære | ǣ́rest mḗtton. Elene, 114–16.
búgon Þā tō bénce | blǣ́d-ā́gènde
fýlle gefǣ́gon. | fǽgene geþǣ́gon
médofull mánig | mā́gas þā́ra. Beowulf, 1013–15.
Seventh Century:
nu scýlun hérgan | héfænrīcæs uárd,
métudæs mǽcti | end his mṓdgidanc. Cædmon’s Hymn
§ 75. The evidence contained in this chapter, with regard to the continuous survival, in its essential rhythmical features, of the Old English native verse down to modern times, may be briefly summed up as follows:—
1. In the oldest remains of English poetry (Beowulf, Elene, Andreas, Judith, Phoenix, &c.) we already find lines with combined alliteration and rhyme intermixed with, and rhythmically equivalent to, the purely alliterative lines, exactly as we do in late Old English and early Middle English poems such as Byrhtnoth, Be Dōmes Dæge, Oratio Poetica, Chronicle an. 1036, Proverbs of Alfred, and Layamon’s Brut.
2. In some of these poems, viz. the Phoenix and the Oratio Poetica, Latin two-beat hemistichs are combined with English hemistichs of similar rhythm to form regular long lines, just as is done in Bale’s play of Kinge Johan (sixteenth century).