(Whose precepts she had trampled on before)
And wore them for a jewell on her head,
Shewing his steps should be the street,
Wherein she thenceforth evermore
With pensive humblenesse would live and tread.
Other stanzas of his correspond to a5 b4 c3 c4 b3 a5, a3 b5 c4 c4 b5 a3, &c. In Moore we have a similar stanza: a b4 c2 b a4 c2 which is unequal-membered on account of the arrangement of rhyme (cf. Metrik, ii, § 344). An unusual form of stanza, which may also be classed under this head, occurs in M. Arnold’s Human Life (p. 40), its formula being a3 b4 c a c b5.
§ 262. A stanza of seven lines is used in Dunbar’s poem The Merchants of Edinborough, formed on the scheme a a a b4 B2 a4 B4; it is very interesting on account of the duplication of the refrain-verses (B2, B4). Apart from the first short refrain-verse the arrangement of rhymes is the same as it is in the entwined tail-rhyme stanza:
Quhy will ȝe, merchantis of renoun,
Lat Edinburgh, ȝour nobill toun,
For laik of reformatioun