I. Isometrical stanzas.
§ 267. In the anisometrical stanzas (which might, as being the older species, have been treated of first) the distinction between the first and the last part of the stanza (frons and cauda) is marked as a rule by a difference of metre in them; in isometrical stanzas, on the other hand, the distinction between the two parts depends solely on the arrangement of the rhyme. For this reason certain six-lined stanzas consisting of two equal parts and a third of the same structure (the formula being a a b b c c4 or the like), which now and then occur in the Surtees Psalter (e.g. Ps. xliv, st. 5), cannot strictly be called tripartite.
Stanzas like these are, however, not unfrequent in Modern English poetry, as e.g. in a song of Carew’s (Poets, iii. 292):
Cease, thou afflicted soul, to mourn,
Whose love and faith are paid with scorn;
For I am starv’d that feel the blisses
Of dear embraces, smiles and kisses,
From my soul’s idol, yet complain
Of equal love more than disdain.
For an account of many other stanzas of the same or similar structure (consisting of trochaic four-foot lines, iambic-anapaestic lines of four stresses, or lines of five, six, and seven measures), see Metrik, ii, §§ 355, 356.