I bowed down weary in the place,
For parting tears and present sleep
Had weighed mine eyelids downward.
Other stanzas of this kind show the scheme: a4 b5 c3 a4 b5 c3, a b2 c4 a b2 c4, a2 b3 c1 a2 b3 c1, a ~ b a ~ b4 c ~6 d ~ e d ~ e4 c ~6; cf. Metrik, ii, § 290.
A stanza belonging to this group, and consisting of ten lines rhyming according to the formula a b a b3 c6 d e d e3 c6, occurs in M. Arnold’s Empedocles on Etna, p. 446 (printed in stanzas of five lines)
§ 247. Another metre, which was equally popular with the tail-rhyme stanza with its many varieties, is the stanza formed of two Septenary verses (catalectic tetrameters). In the Middle English period we find it used with feminine rhymes only; afterwards, however, there are both feminine and masculine rhymes, and in modern times the feminine ending is quite exceptional. This metre, broken up into four lines, is one of the oldest and most popular of equal-membered stanzas. One of its forms[190] has in hymn-books the designation of Common Metre.
Middle and Modern English specimens of this simple form have been given above (§§ [77], [78], [136], [138–40]); in some of them the verses rhyme and are printed as long lines; in others the verses rhyme in long lines but are printed as short ones (a b c b), and in others, again, the verses both rhyme and are printed as short lines (a b a b).
On the analogy of this stanza, especially of the short-lined rhyming form, and of the doubled form with intermittent rhyme (which is, properly speaking, a stanza rhyming in long lines), there have been developed many new strophic forms. One of the most popular of these is the stanza consisting alternately of four- and three-foot iambic-anapaestic verses. In this form is written, e.g. the celebrated poem of Charles Wolfe, The Burial of Sir John Moore (cf. § [191]):
Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,