frons :
{
Quhome to sall I complene my wo,
And kyth my kairis on or mo?
cauda:
{
I knaw nocht, amang riche nor pure,
Quha is my freynd, quha is my fo;
For in this warld may non assure.
In literary poetry, however, the tripartite stanzas are commoner than the bipartite unequal-membered stanzas just noticed; they are as much in favour as the bipartite, equal-membered stanzas are in popular poetry. In Provençal and Northern French poetry the principle of a triple partition in the structure of stanzas was developed very early. Stanzas on these models were very soon imported into Middle English poetry.
§ 226. The tripartite stanzas generally (apart from Modern English forms) consist of two equal parts and one unequal part, which admit of being arranged in different ways. They have accordingly different names. If the two equal parts precede they are called pedes, both together the opening (in German Aufgesang =‘upsong’); the unequal part that concludes the stanza is called the conclusion or the veer, tail, or cauda (in German Abgesang =‘downsong’). If the unequal part precedes it is called frons (=‘forehead’); the two equal parts that form the end of the stanza are called versus (‘turns,’ in German Wenden). The former arrangement, however, is by far the more frequent.
There are various ways of separating the first from the last part of the stanza: (a) by a pause, which, as a rule, in Romanic as well as in Middle English poetry occurs between the two chief parts; (b) by a difference in their structure (whether in rhyme-arrangement only, or both in regard to the kinds and the number of verses). But even then the two chief parts are generally separated by a pause. We thus obtain three kinds of tripartite stanzas:
1. Stanzas in which the first and the last part differ in versification; the lines of the last part may either be longer or shorter than those of the ‘pedes’. Difference in rhythmical structure as well as in length of line is in Middle English poetry confined to the bob-wheel stanzas, and is not otherwise common except in Modern English poetry.