The whiles doe ye this song unto her sing,
The woods shall to you answer, and your Eccho ring.
These stanzas evidently consist of three or four unequal parts, the two first parts (ll. 1–6, 7–11) being connected by rhyme. There is a certain similarity between them, the chief difference being that the second pes, as we may call it, is shortened by one verse. With the third part, a new system of verses rhyming together commences, forming a kind of last part (downsong or cauda); and as the final couplet of the stanza is generally closely connected in sense with this, the assumption of a tripartite division of the stanza is preferable to that of a quadripartite division.
§ 302. Stanzas of this kind have also been used by later poets in similar poems. But all these imitations of the Epithalamium stanza are shorter than their model. As to their structure, some of them might also be ranked among the irregular Spenserian stanzas, as they agree with those in having a longer final verse of six or seven measures. But as a rule, they have—not to speak of the similarity of theme—the combination of three- and five-foot verses in the principal part, on the model, it seems, of Spenser’s Epithalamium stanza.
Stanzas of this kind (eight lines up to fourteen) occur in Donne and Ben Jonson; the schemes being—
of eight lines: a b a b5 c3 c2 d3 d6 (Poets, iv. 588);
of eleven lines: a5 a b4 b5 c3 c d d e e5 E7 (ib. iv. 19);
of twelve lines: a4 a b c c b d e5 e3 d f5 F6 (ib. 16);
of fourteen lines: a5 a b4 b5 c3 d d c5 e4 e f f g5 G6 (ib. 15).
For specimens see Metrik, ii, § 512.