In Modern English stanzas of this kind, consisting of Septenary verses, are of rare occurrence. We have an example in Leigh Hunt’s The jovial Priest’s Confession (p. 338), a translation of the well-known poem ascribed to Walter Map, Mihi est propositum in taberna mori (cf. §§ 135, 182).
Shorter verses, e.g. iambic lines of three measures, are also very rarely used for such stanzas; e.g. in Donne and Denham (Poets, iv. 48 and v. 611)
§ 253. A small group of other stanzas connected with the above may be called indivisible stanzas. They consist of a one-rhymed main part mostly of three, more rarely of two or four lines, followed by a shorter refrain-verse, a cauda, as it were, but in itself too unimportant to lend a bipartite character to the stanza. Otherwise, stanzas like these might be looked upon as bipartite unequal-membered stanzas, with which, indeed, they stand in close relationship. Three-lined stanzas of this kind occur in Modern English only; as e.g. a stanza consisting of an heroic couplet and a two-foot refrain verse of different rhythm: a a5 B2 in Moore’s Song:
Oh! where are they, who heard in former hours,
The voice of song in these neglected bowers?
They are gone—all gone!
Other stanzas show the formulas a a5 b3 and a a4 b3. Their structure evidently is analogous to that of a four-lined Middle English stanza a a a4 B3, the model of which we find in Low Latin and Provençal poetry (cf. Metrik, i. 373) and in Furnivall’s Political, Religious, and Love Poems, p. 4:
Sithe god hathe chose þe to be his knyȝt,
And posseside þe in þi right,
Thou hime honour with al thi myght,