Snatch’d their fair actions from degrading prose,
And set their battles in eternal light:
High as their trumpets’ tune his lyre he strung,
And with his prince’s arms he moraliz’d his song.
This stanza has been used by some subsequent poets, e.g. by Chatterton, who himself invented a similar imitation of the old Spenserian form, viz. a b a b b a b a c5 c6. Other stanzas of ten lines are a b a b b c d c d5 d6, a b b a c d d c e5 e6, a b a b c c d e e5 d6. (For specimens see Metrik, ii, § 497.) A stanza of eleven lines on the scheme a b a b c d c d c d5 d6 occurs in Wordsworth in the Cuckoo-clock (viii. 161)
§ 299. Amongst the stanzaic formations analogous to the Spenserian stanza, which for the most part were invented by the poets just mentioned, two different groups are to be distinguished; firstly, stanzas the body of which consists of four-foot (seldom three-foot) verses, a six-foot final verse being added to them either immediately or preceded by a five-foot verse; secondly, stanzas of anisometrical structure in the principal part, the end-verse being of six or sometimes of seven feet.
The stanzas of the first group consist of four to ten lines, and have the following formulas: four-lined stanzas, a b c4 b6 (Wordsworth); five lines, a b a b3 b6 (Shelley); six lines, a b a a b3 b6 (Ben Jonson), a b a b4 c5 c6 (Wordsworth, Coleridge), a a3 b5 c c3 b6 (R. Browning); seven lines, a ~ b b a ~ c c4 c7 (Mrs. Browning); eight lines, a b a b c c d4 d6 (Gray, Wordsworth), a a b b c c d4 d6 (John Scott), a a b b c c4 d5 d6 (Coleridge); nine lines, a b a b c d c4 d5 c6 and a b a b c c d d4 d6 (Akenside), a b a b b c b c4 c6 (Shelley, Stanzas written in Dejection, i. 370); ten lines, a b a b c d c d4 e5 e6 (Whitehead).
As an example we quote a stanza of nine lines from Shelley’s poem mentioned above:
I see the Deep’s untrampled floor
With green and purple seaweeds strown;