The god of love,—a! benedicite,
How mighty and how greet a lord is he!
For he can make of lowe hertes hye,
And of hye lowe, and lyke for to dye,
And harde hertes he can maken free.
The same stanza, both of four- and five-foot lines, is frequently employed by Dunbar; e.g. On his Heid-Ake, The Visitation of St. Francis, &c. We find it also in modern poets, composed of the same, or of other verses; Moore, e.g., has used it with five-foot iambic-anapaestic lines, in At the mid hour of Night.
A stanza on the model a b a b b is a favourite in Modern English; it is formed from the four-lined stanza (a b a b) by repeating the last rhyme. It consists of the most different kinds of verse; an example is Carew’s To my inconstant Mistress (Poets, iii. 678):
When thou, poor excommunicate
From all the joys of love, shall see