The shorter, Septenary part of the stanza represents the frons, the tail-rhyme stanza, the versus. Of a similar form (a4 b3 a4 b3 a a4 b3 a b3 a2) is the stanza of the poem An Orison of our Lady (E. E. T. S., vol. xlix, p. 158). In Modern English also allied forms occur; one especially with the scheme a4 b3 a4 b3 c c d e e4 d3 in Gray, Ode on the Spring (Poets, x. 215); other forms are a4 b3 a4 b3 c c2 d3 e e2 d4, a4 b3 a4 b3 c c d e e4 d5, a b3 a4 b3 d d4 e3 f f4 e3. (For examples see Metrik, ii, § 432.) The reverse combination, viz. tail-rhyme stanza and Septenary (on the scheme a a4 b3 c c4 b3 d4 b3 d4 b3), also occurs in Middle English times[195]), e.g. in Wright’s Spec. of Lyr. Poetry, p. 87:
Nou skrinkeþ rose and lylie flour,
þat whilen ber þat suete sauour,
in somer, þat suete tyde;
ne is no quene so stark ne stour,
ne no leuedy so bryht in bour,
þat ded ne shal by glyde.
Whose wol fleyshlust forgon,
and heuene blis abyde,