Since fáith is déad,
And trúth awáy
From mé is fléd?
Wyatt, p. 130.
|
For míght is ríht,
Líht is níght,
And fíht is flíht.
Wright’s Political Songs, p. 254 |
I ám the kníght,
I cóme by níght
The Nutbrowne Mayd, line 33. |
§ 79. In the fourteenth century the heroic verse was added to these Middle English metres; a rhyming iambic line of five feet, formed after the model of the French line of ten syllables, e.g.:
A kníght ther wás, | and thát a wórthy mán.
Chaucer, Prol. 43.
Finally, the verse used in the tail-rhyme staves (rime couée) must be mentioned. As this verse, however, usually appears only in that form in which it is broken up into three short ones which compose one half of the stave, its origin will be more properly discussed in the second Book, treating of the origin and form of the different stanzas. To begin with, however, it was simply a long line of three rhythmical sections. Indications of this are here and there found in the way in which it is arranged in MSS. and early printed books, e.g. in the first version of the Legend of Alexius,[126] where it is written in triple columns on the large folio pages of the Vernon MS. in the Bodleian Library: