A History of English Versification

by J. Schipper

§ 222. Another and more usual means of connecting the single stanzas of a poem with each other is the refrain (called by the Provençal poets refrim, i.e. ‘echo’; by German metrists sometimes called Kehrreim, i.e. recurrent rhyme). The refrain is of popular origin, arising from the part taken by the people in popular songs or ecclesiastical hymns by repeating certain exclamations, words, or sentences at the end of single lines or stanzas. The refrain generally occurs at the end of a stanza, rarely in the interior of a stanza or in both places, as in a late ballad quoted by Ritson, Ancient Songs and Ballads, ii. 75.

In Old English poetry the refrain is used in one poem only, viz. in Deor’s Complaint, as the repetition of a whole line. In Middle and Modern English poetry the refrain is much more extensively employed. Its simplest form, consisting of the repetition of certain exclamations or single words after each stanza, occurs pretty often in Middle English. Frequent use is also made of the other form, in which one line is partially or entirely repeated. Sometimes, indeed, two or even more lines are repeated, or a whole stanza is added as refrain to each of the main stanzas, and is then placed at the beginning of the poem (cf. Wright’s Spec. of Lyr. Poetry, p. 51).

In English the refrain is also called burthen, and consists (according to Guest) of the entire or at least partial repetition of the same words. Distinct from the burthen or refrain is the wheel, which is only the repetition of the same rhythm as an addition to a stanza. In Middle English poetry especially a favourite form was that in which a stanza consisting mostly of alliterative-rhyming verses or half-verses (cf. §§ [60], [61], [66]) is followed by an addition (the cauda), differing very much from the rhythmical structure of the main part (the frons) of the stanza, and connected with it by means of a very short verse consisting of only one arsis and the syllable or syllables forming the thesis. This short verse is called by Guest bob-verse, and the cauda, connected with the chief stanza by means of such a verse, he calls bob-wheel, so that the whole stanza, which is of a very remarkable form, might be called the bob-wheel stanza. The similar form of stanza, also very common, where the chief part of the stanza is connected with the ‘cauda’, not by a ‘bob-verse’ but by an ordinary long line, might be called the wheel-stanza. These remarks now bring us to other considerations of importance with regard to the formation of the stanza, which will be treated of in the next section.

§ 223. The structure and arrangement of the different parts of the stanza in Middle English poetry were also modelled on Low Latin and especially on Romanic forms.

The theory of the structure of stanzas in Provençal and Italian is given along with much interesting matter in Dante’s treatise De vulgari eloquentia[186], where the original Romanic technical terms are found. Several terms used in this book have also been taken from German metrics.

In the history of Middle English poetry two groups of stanzas must be distinguished: divisible and indivisible stanzas (the one-rhymed stanzas being included in the latter class). The divisible stanzas consist either of two equal parts (bipartite equal-membered stanzas) or of two unequal parts (bipartite unequal-membered stanzas) or thirdly of two equal parts and an unequal one (tripartite stanzas). Now and then (especially in Modern English poetry) they consist of three equal parts. These three types are common to Middle and Modern English poetry. A fourth class is met with in Modern English poetry only, viz. stanzas generally consisting of three, sometimes of four or more unequal parts.

All the kinds of verse that have been previously described in this work can be used in these different classes of stanzas, both separately and conjointly. In each group, accordingly, isometrical and anisometrical stanzas must be distinguished. Very rarely, and only in Modern English, we find that even the rhythm of the separate verses of a stanza is not uniform; iambic and trochaic, anapaestic and dactylic, or iambic and anapaestic verses interchanging with each other, so that a further distinction between isorhythmical and anisorhythmical stanzas is possible.

§ 224. The bipartite equal-membered stanzas, in their simplest form, consist of two equal periods, each composed of a prior and a succeeding member. They are to be regarded as the primary forms of all strophic poetry.

The two periods may be composed either of two rhyming couplets or of four verses rhyming alternately with each other. Specimens of both classes have been quoted above (§ 78). Such equal-membered stanzas can be extended, of course, in each part uniformly without changing the isometrical character of the stanza.

§ 225. The bipartite unequal-membered stanzas belong to a more advanced stage in the formation of the stanza. They are, however, found already in Provençal poetry, and consist of the ‘forehead’ (frons) and the ‘tail’ or veer (cauda). The frons and the cauda differ sometimes only in the number of verses, and consequently, in the order of the rhymes, and sometimes also in the nature of the verse. The two parts may either have quite different rhymes or be connected together by one or several common rhymes. As a simple specimen of this sort of stanza the first stanza of Dunbar’s None may assure in this warld may be quoted here: