Oh! the joy that we taste, like the light of the poles,
Is a flash amid darkness, too brilliant to stay;
But, though ’twere the last little spark in our souls,
We must light it up now, on our Prince’s Day.
For other forms of stanzas belonging to this group see Metrik, ii, § 447
§ 285. More numerous are stanzas of fourteen lines. Judging by the examples which have come to our knowledge, they are also, as a rule, formed by combination with a tail-rhyme stanza; as e.g. in a stanza by Browne (Poets, iv. 276) on the scheme a b a b c a c a5 a a2 b3 c c2 b3; another stanza, frequently used by Burns, corresponds to the formula a a4 b3 c c4 b3 d4 e3 d4 e3 f ~2 g3 h ~2 g3 and occurs, e.g., in his Epistle to Davie (p. 57):
While winds frae aff Ben-Lomond blaw,
And bar the doors wi’ driving snaw,
And hing us owre the ingle,
I set me down, to pass the time,