CHAPTER VII
THE SPENSERIAN STANZA AND FORMS DERIVED FROM IT
§ 297. One of the most important Modern English stanzas is the Spenserian, so called after its inventor. This stanza, like the forms discussed in the last chapter, but in a still greater degree, is based on an older type. For it is not, as is sometimes said, derived from the Italian ottava rima (cf. § [292]), but, as was pointed out by Guest (ii. 389), from a Middle English eight-lined popular stanza of five-foot verses with rhymes on the formula a b a b b c b c, which was modelled in its turn on a well-known Old French ballade-stanza (cf. § [269]). To this stanza Spenser added a ninth verse of six feet rhyming with the eighth line, an addition which was evidently meant to give a very distinct and impressive conclusion to the stanza.
As a specimen the first stanza of the first book of the Faerie Queene, where it was used for the first time, may be quoted here:
A gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine,
Ycladd in mightie armes and silver shielde,
Wherein old dints of deepe woundes did remaine,
The cruell markes of many a bloody fielde;
Yet armes till that time did he never wield.