And évery trée unclóthed fást, | as Náture táught them pláin:
In místy mórning dárk, | as shéep are thén in hóld,
I híed me fást, it sát me ón, | my shéep for tó unfóld.
Brooke’s narrative poem Romeus and Juliet, utilized by Shakespeare for his drama of the same name, is in this metre. Probably the strict iambic cadence and the fixed position of the caesura caused this metre to appear especially adapted for cultured poetry, at a time when rising and falling rhythms were first sharply distinguished. It was, however, not long popular, though isolated examples are found in modern poets, as, for instance, Cowper and Watts. Thackeray uses it for comic poems, for which it appears especially suitable, sometimes using the two kinds of verse promiscuously, as Dean Swift had done before him, and sometimes employing the Alexandrine and Septenary in regular alternation.
§ 147. The Alexandrine runs more smoothly than the Septenary. The Middle English Alexandrine is a six-foot iambic line with a caesura after the third foot. This caesura, like the end of the line, may be either masculine or feminine.
This metre was probably employed for the first time in Robert Mannyng’s translation of Peter Langtoft’s rhythmical Chronicle, partly composed in French Alexandrines. The four metrical types of the model mentioned above (p. [198]) naturally also make their appearance here.
a. Méssengérs he sent | þórghout Ínglónd
b. Untó the Ínglis kýnges | þat hád it ín þer hónd.
p. 2, ll. 3–4.
c. Áfter Éthelbért | com Élfríth his bróther,