Believe me, friend, may hope in vain—
These classic things are not the mode;
Our taste polite, so much refin’d,
Demands a strain of different kind.
For similar stanzas according to the formulas a b b a a b4, a b b a c c5, a b b a c3 c5 (Milton, Psalm IV), a b b a5 c4 c5, and a b b a c5 c3, see Metrik, ii, § 456.
Other stanzas have anisometrical first and last parts; as e.g. one on the model a5 b b4 a5 c4 c3 which was used by Cowley, Upon the shortness of Man’s Life (Poets, v. 227):
Mark that swift arrow, how it cuts the air,
How it outruns thy following eye!
Use all persuasions now, and try
If thou canst call it back, or stay it there.