A History of English Versification

by J. Schipper

That any loves but he.

§ 249. Pretty often we find—not indeed in middle English, but in Modern English poetry—eight-lined (doubled) forms of the different four-lined stanzas. Only doubled forms, however, of the formula a₄ b₃ a₄ b₃ c₄ d₃ c₄ d₃ are employed with any frequency; they have either only masculine rhymes or rhymes which vary between masculine and feminine. An example of the latter kind we have in Drayton’s To his coy Love (Poets, iii. 585):

I pray thee, love, love me no more,

Call home the heart you gave me,

I but in vain that saint adore,

That can, but will not save me:

These poor half kisses kill me quite;

Was ever man thus served?

Amidst an ocean of delight,

For pleasure to be starved.