Oh move, thou Cottage, from behind that oak!
Or let the aged tree uprooted lie,
That in some other way yon smoke
May mount into the sky:
The clouds pass on; they from the heavens depart.
I look—the sky is empty space;
I know not what I trace;
But when I cease to look, my hand is on my heart.
Stanzas of nine lines, especially occurring in Donne, have the formulas a b b5 a3 c c c4 d5 d6 (Poets, iv. 29), a a b b c5 c d4 d5 d7 (ib. 36), a2 b b a5 c c2 d d5 d7 (ib. 31), a a b b b5 c d d4 c6 (ib. vii. 142), &c.; of ten lines, a a4 b b c c5 d4 d d5 d6 (ib. iv. 28), a a b c c4 b2 d e d5 e6 (ib. ix. 788), a b a b5 c c d d4 e5 e6 (Shelley, Phantasm of Jupiter in Prometheus Unbound); of twelve lines, a b a b5 c c d d e e5 f5 f6 (Poets, xi. 588); of thirteen lines, a b ~4 a5 b ~3 c4 c5 d d2 e5 e2 f5 e2 f6 (Ben Jonson, Ode to James, Earl of Desmond, ib. iv. 572); of fifteen lines, a b a b c5 d d4 d6 c e c e d f5 f6 (Shelley, Ode to Liberty, i. 360–9); of sixteen lines, a b a b a b a b5 c c3 b5 d d3 b5 e4 e6 (Swinburne, New-Year Ode to Victor Hugo (Midsummer Holiday, pp. 39–63).
This last stanza has an exceedingly fine structure, consisting of an isometrical first part and an anisometrical tail-rhyme stanza + an anisometrical rhyming couplet, forming the last part: