Rhymed five-accent verse occurs in Middle English both in poems composed in stanza form and (since Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women, c. 1386) in couplets.

This metre, apart from differences in the length of the line and in number of accents, is by no means to be looked upon as different from the remaining even-stressed metres of that time. For, like the Middle English four-foot verse and the Alexandrine, it derives its origin from a French source, its prototype being the French decasyllabic verse. This is a metre with rising rhythm, in which the caesura generally comes after the fourth syllable, as e.g. in the line:

Ja mais n’iert tels | com fut as anceisors. Saint Alexis, l. 5.

To this verse the following line of Chaucer’s corresponds exactly in point of structure:

A kníght ther wás, | and thát a wórthy mán.

Cant. Tales, Prol. 43

§ 152. The English verse, like the French decasyllabic, admits feminine caesuras and feminine line-endings, and the first thesis (anacrusis) may be absent; there are, therefore, sixteen varieties theoretically possible.

I. Principal Types.II. With Initial Truncation
(omission of the first thesis).
1.⏑–⏑–⏑–⏑–⏑–10 syll.5.–⏑–⏑–⏑–⏑–9 syll.
2.⏑–⏑–⏑⏑–⏑–⏑–11 ”6.–⏑–⏑⏑–⏑–⏑–10 ”
3.⏑–⏑–⏑–⏑–⏑–⏑11 ”7.–⏑–⏑–⏑–⏑–⏑10 ”
4.⏑–⏑–⏑⏑–⏑–⏑–⏑12 ”8.–⏑–⏑⏑–⏑–⏑–⏑11 ”
III. With Internal Truncation
(omission of the thesis after the caesura).		IV. With both Initial and Internal Truncation.
9. ⏑–⏑––⏑–⏑–9 syll.13.–⏑––⏑–⏑–8 syll.
10. ⏑–⏑–⏑ –⏑–⏑–10 ”14.–⏑–⏑ –⏑–⏑–9 ”
11. ⏑–⏑– –⏑–⏑–⏑10 ”15.–⏑– –⏑–⏑–⏑9 ”
12. ⏑–⏑–⏑ –⏑–⏑–⏑11 ”16.–⏑–⏑ –⏑–⏑–⏑10 ”