At night he said, ‘The wanderings

Of this most intricate Universe

Teach me the nothingness of things.’

Yet could not all creation pierce

Beyond the bottom of his eye.

Longer isometrical stanzas are unfrequent, and need hardly be mentioned here (cf. Metrik, ii, p. 556).

III. Bipartite unequal-membered anisometrical stanzas.

§ 257. Two-lined and four-lined stanzas. The shortest stanzas of this kind consist of two anisometrical lines, rhyming in couplets, e.g. four- and five-foot, five- and three-foot lines, &c.

These have been mentioned before (§ [207]); but as a rule they are used, like the heroic couplet, in continuous systems only, without strophic arrangement.