Falshod, gylt, and trechery;
Therefor am I namyd by clergy
As mali actoris.
Other stanzas, the first cauda-verse of which has four beats (on the scheme A B A B A B A B C4 d d d c2), were also very much in vogue. Stanzas of this kind occur in the poems Golagros and Gawane, The Buke of the Howlat, Rauf Coilȝear, and The Awntyrs of Arthure at the Terne Wathelyne (S. T. S. vol. 28; cf. § [61]). An interesting variety of the common form (with a five-lined cauda) we have in the poem Of sayne John the Euangelist (E. E. T. S., 26, p. 87). The stanza consists of an eight-lined frons of crossed rhymes and a cauda formed by a six-lined tail-rhyme stanza[192] of two-beat verses, on the scheme A B A B A B A B4 c c d c c d2.
As to the rhythmical structure of the half-verses used in the cauda of the stanza cf. the explanations given in § [64].
§ 266. The bob-wheel stanzas[193] were preserved in the North in Scottish poetry (e.g. Alex. Montgomerie) up to the Modern English period.[194] It is not unlikely that they found their way from this source into Modern English poetry, where they are also met with, though they have not attained any marked popularity.
It must, however, be kept in mind that the Modern English bob-wheel stanzas are not a direct imitation of the Middle English. Sometimes they were influenced probably by the odes, as there is a marked likeness between these two forms, e.g. in two stanzas of Donne (Poets, iv. 24 and 39) on the schemes A B A B C C4 d d1 D4 and A2 A5 B4 C C5 B4 d1 D E E5; or in a stanza of Ben Jonson in an ode to Wm. Sidney (Poets, iv. 558) on the model A5 B4 c c1 B3 a d d e2 E5, and in another in The Dream (iv. 566), A A4 B3 C C4 A5 A4 B3 b1 D D3 E E4 B5.
In this and other cases they consist of even-measured, seldom of four-stressed verses, as e.g. in Suckling, who seems to have been very fond of these forms of stanza; cf. the following stanza on the model A A4 B3 c c1 b2 (Poets, iii. 736):
That none beguiled be by time’s quick flowing,