CHAPTER XV
NON-STROPHIC, ANISOMETRICAL COMBINATIONS OF RHYMED VERSE
§ 206. Non-strophic anisometrical combinations of rhymed verse consist of lines of different metres, rhyming in pairs, and recurring in a definite order of succession. One of these combinations, known as the Poulter’s Measure (Alexandrine + Septenary), already occurs in the Middle English Period (cf. § [146]) and has remained in use down to the present day. It was at one time extremely popular, and has in the Modern English Period been imitated in other metres.
The most common variety of this metre is that in which the verses have an iambic-anapaestic rhythm; they are usually printed in short lines, as e.g. in a poem by Charles Kingsley:
When Í was a gréenhorn and yóung,
And wánted to bé and to dó,
I púzzled my bráins about chóosing my líne,
Till I fóund out the wáy that things gó.
Before his time Burns had composed a poem in the same metre, Here’s a Health to them that’s awa (p. 245); and at the end of the seventeenth century Philips (Poets, vi. 560) wrote a Bacchanalian Song in similar verses.