PART II
STANZAS COMMON TO MIDDLE AND MODERN
ENGLISH, AND OTHERS FORMED ON THE
ANALOGY OF THESE
CHAPTER III
BIPARTITE EQUAL-MEMBERED STANZAS
I. Isometrical stanzas.
§ 230. Two-line stanzas. The simplest bipartite equal-membered stanza is that of two isometrical verses only. In the Northern English translation of the Psalms (Surtees Society, vols. xvi and xix) we find, for the most part, two-line stanzas of four-foot verses rhyming in couplets, occasionally alternating with stanzas of four, six, eight, or more lines.
In Middle English poetry, however, this form was generally used for longer poems that were not arranged in stanzas. Although it would be possible to divide some of these (e.g. the Moral Ode), either throughout or in certain parts, into bipartite stanzas, there is no reason to suppose that any strophic arrangement was intended.
In Modern English, on the other hand, such an arrangement is often intentional, as in R. Browning, The Boy and the Angel (iv. 158), a poem of four-foot trochaic verses:
Morning, evening, noon and night
‘Praise God!’ sang Theocrite.