Another stanza, which is used in Carew’s Love’s Courtship (Poets, iii. 707), is formed on the scheme a a4 b2 c c4, where the tail-verse of the second half-stanza is wanting. As to the other varieties, arising from the use of other metres, cf. Metrik, ii, § 338.
Sometimes stanzas of three rhymes occur, rhyming crosswise throughout, and of various forms, e.g. a b a c4 b3 in Longfellow, The Saga of King Olaf (p. 565); a b4 c3 a4 c2 in Coleridge; a b a b5 C3 in Mrs. Hemans (iv. 119); a b a b4 C3 in Moore, Weep, Children of Israel:
Weep, weep for him, the Man of God—
In yonder vale he sunk to rest;
But none of earth can point the sod
That flowers above his sacred breast.
Weep, children of Israel, weep!
For other varieties see Metrik, ii, § 339
§ 261. Unequal-membered anisometrical stanzas of six lines are only rarely met with in Middle English, as e.g. a a4 b b b a2 in Dunbar’s poem, Aganis Treason.