DIVISION II
Verse-forms Common to the Middle and
Modern English Periods
CHAPTER IX
LINES OF EIGHT FEET, FOUR FEET, TWO FEET,
AND ONE FOOT
§ 125. Among the metres introduced into Middle English poetry in imitation of foreign models, perhaps the oldest is the four-foot verse, rhyming in couplets. This metre may be regarded as having originally arisen by halving the eight-foot line, although only an isolated example of this, dating from about the middle of the thirteenth century, quoted above (p. [127]), is known in Middle English poetry. This, however, serves with special clearness to illustrate the resolution, by means of inserted rhyme, of the eight-foot long-line couplet into four-foot lines rhyming alternately (cf. § [78]).
In the manuscript the verses, though rhyming in long lines, are written as short lines, with intermittent rhyme a b c b d b e b, just as the example of Modern English eight-foot iambic verse, quoted before (p. [127]), is found printed with this arrangement, as is indeed generally the case with most long-line forms of that type. This metre calls for no other remarks on its rhythmical structure than will have to be made with regard to the four-foot verse.
§ 126. The four-foot line, rhyming in couplets, first appears in a paraphrase of the Pater Noster of the end of the twelfth century,[142] doubtless in imitation of the Old French vers octosyllabe made known in England by Anglo-Norman poets, such as Gaimar, Wace, Benoit, &c.
This French metre consists of eight syllables when the ending is monosyllabic, and nine when it is disyllabic.
The lines are always connected in couplets by rhyme, but masculine and feminine rhymes need not alternate with one another.
It is exactly the same with the Middle English four-foot line, except that the rising iambic rhythm comes out more clearly in it, and that, instead of the Romanic principle of counting the syllables, that of the equality of beats is perceptible, so that the equality of the number of syllables in the verses is not so strictly observed. Hence, all the deviations before mentioned from the strict formal structure of even-beat verses occur even in this early poem, and quite regularly constructed couplets are indeed but rare in it. Examples of this type are the following:
Ah, láverd gód, her úre béne,