T’other the lively form of God;
’Squire Wallis, you will scarce be able
To prove all poetry but fable.
A stanza of trochaic verses corresponding to a similar scheme, viz. a a b c c b d d d b4, is used by Tennyson in The Window (p. 284).
Sometimes the scheme is a b a b c c d e e d4 (where there are two pedes forming a frons, and a tail-rhyme stanza equivalent to two versus), as in Akenside, Book I, Ode II (Poets, ix. 773).
Some stanzas, on the other hand, have a parallel arrangement of rhymes, a a b b c c d d e E (e E being the cauda) as in Walter Scott, Soldier, Wake (p. 465); or more frequently crossed rhymes, a b a b c d c d e e5, a b a b c d c d e e4, the first eight verses forming the upsong (pedes); or with a four-lined upsong a a b b c d c d e e4, a a b b c d d e d e3, a b a b b c c d c D5. The last-mentioned form has been used several times by Swinburne, e.g. Poems, ii, pp. 126, 215, 219, &c., in his ballads. For specimens see Metrik, ii, §§ 379–81.
§ 272. Stanzas of eleven lines are very scarce in Middle English poetry, if used there at all, and even in Modern English very few examples occur. A stanza of Swinburne’s may be mentioned here, imitated from an Old French ballade- (or rather chant-royal) stanza, corresponding to the formula a b a b c c d d e d E5 and used in a Ballad against the Enemies of France (Poems, ii. 212). Cf. Metrik, ii, §382.
Twelve-lined stanzas are much more frequently used, even in Middle English poetry; one of four-foot verses according to the scheme a b a b a b a b b c b C (the stanzas being connected into groups by concatenatio) occurs in the fine fourteenth-century poem, The Pearl. Another of four-stressed verses corresponding to the formula a b a b a b a b c d c d we have in Wright’s Polit. Songs, p. 149; one of four-foot verses together with other forms of stanzas (a b a b a b a b a b a b, a b a b c d c d e f e f) we have in the poem on the Childhood of Christ (ed. Horstmann, Heilbronn, 1878).
But it is chiefly in Modern English poetry that stanzas of twelve lines are very common, especially stanzas consisting of three equal parts, with crossed rhymes. In some of these there is no difference at all in the structure of the three parts, as e.g. in a stanza by Prior (Poets, vii. 402) on the model a b a b c d c d e f e f4; while in others the refrain (consisting of the four last verses) forms the cauda, as e.g. in Moore’s Song on the Birthday of Mrs. ——: