Others the like have laboured at,
Some of this thing and some of that,
And many of they know not what,
But that they must be saying.
Other examples of this stanza, as of similar ones, consisting of four- and three-foot trochaic and iambic-anapaestic verses, are given in Metrik, ii, § 280.
There are some subdivisions of this stanza consisting of verses of three and two measures, of four and two measures, four and one measure, five and two, and five and one measure, according to the formulae a a a3 b2 c c c3 b2, a a a4 b2 c c c4 b2, a a a4 b1 c c c4 b1, a a a5 b2 c c c5 b2, a a a5 b1 c c c5 b1. For specimens see Metrik, ii, § 281.
The ten-lined tail-rhyme stanza occurs very rarely; we have an example in Longfellow’s The Goblet of Life (p. 114), its formula being a a a a4 b3 c c c c4 b3
§ 243. We find, however, pretty often—though only in Modern English—certain variant forms of the enlarged eight- and ten-lined tail-rhyme stanzas, the chief verses of which are of unequal length in each half-stanza; as in Congreve’s poem, On Miss Temple (Poets, vii. 568). In this poem the first verse of each half-stanza is shortened by one foot, in accordance with the formula a3 a a4 b3 c3 c c4 b3:
Leave, leave the drawing-room,
Where flowers of beauty us’d to bloom;