Help you to rise so tall:
Tell her, as once I for her sake lov’d breath,
So for her sake I now court lingering death.
Other madrigals have the following schemes (the first occurring twice in Sidney and once in Drummond, while the rest are found in Drummond only):
fifteen lines, a3 a5 b3 c5 c3 b5 b3 d5 d3 e e5 d3 e f f5; fourteen lines, a a3 a5 b3 c5 b3 c d5 e e3 d f5 d3 f5; thirteen lines, a a3 b5 c c3 b5 c3 d d5 e3 f e f5; twelve lines,a2 b5 b3 a5 c d3 d c5 c e3 f f5; eleven lines, a3 b c a5 b d3 d e e f f5; ten lines, a b3 b a5 a c b3 c d d5; nine lines, a3 a5 b c b3 c c d d5; eight lines, a3 a5 b b c3 c d d5; seven lines, a b a3 c c5 a3 b5; six lines, a b b a c3 c5; five lines, a b b3 a b5. For specimens of these and other madrigals in Drummond cf. Metrik, ii, § 508
§ 317. Some poems in Drummond’s and Sidney’s works entitled epigrams consist, as a rule, of two or more five-foot verses, rhyming in couplets. In Sidney there are also short poems resembling these in subject, but consisting of one-rhymed Alexandrines. We have also one in R. Browning (iii. 146) of seven one-rhymed Septenary verses; several others occur in D. G. Rossetti (ii. 137–40) of eight lines on the schemes a a4 b b4 a a4 b b4 styled Chimes (cf. Metrik, ii, §§ 570, 571.)
§ 318. The terza-rima. Of much greater importance is another Italian form, viz. a continuous stanza of eleven-syllable verses, the terza-rima, the metre in which Dante wrote his Divina Commedia. It first appears in English poetry in Chaucer’s Complaint to his Lady, second and third part,[204] but may be said to have been introduced into English literature by Wyatt, who wrote satires and penitential psalms in this form (Ald. ed. pp. 186–7, 209–34), and by Surrey in his Description of the restless state of a Lover (Ald. ed. p. 1). The rhyme-system of the terza-rima is a b a b c b c d c, &c. That is to say, the first and third lines of the first triplet rhyme together, while the middle line has a different rhyme which recurs in the first and third line of the second triplet; and in the same manner the first and third lines of each successive triplet rhyme with the middle line of the preceding one, so as to form a continuous chain of three-line stanzas of iambic five-foot verses till the end of the poem, which is formed by a single line added to the last stanza and rhyming with its second line.
The first stanzas of Surrey’s poem may be quoted here:
The sun hath twice brought forth his tender green,
Twice clad the earth in lively lustiness;