A system of ten lines, consisting of five-foot verses (a b a b b c a e d D, D e d e e f d f g G, G h g h h i g i k K, &c., ending in a stanza of four lines, X y x y) occurs in Sidney, pp. 218–20 (221–4, xxxi); cf. Metrik, ii, § 580
§ 320. Still less popular was another Italian poetical form, the sextain, originally invented by the Provençal poet, Arnaut Daniel, and for the first time reproduced in English poetry by Sidney in his Arcadia.
The sextain consists of eleven-syllabled or rather five-foot verses and has six stanzas of six lines each, and an envoy of three lines in addition. Each of the six stanzas, considered individually, is rhymeless, and so is the envoy. But the end-words of the lines of each stanza from the second to the sixth are identical with those of the lines in the preceding stanza, but in a different order, viz. six, one, five, two, four, three. In the envoy, the six end-words of the first stanza recur, in the same order, alternately in the middle and at the end of the line. Hence the whole system of rhymes (or rather of recurrence of end-words) is as follows: a b c d e f . f a e b d c . c f d a b e . e c b f a d . d e a c f b . b d f e c a + (a) b (c) d (e) f.
The first two stanzas of Sidney’s Agelastus Sestine, pp. 438–9 (426–7, lxxiv), together with the envoy and with the end-words of the other stanzas, may serve to make this clear:
Since wayling is a bud of causefull sorrow,
Since sorrow is the follower of evill fortune,
Since no evill fortune equals publike damage;
Now Prince’s losse hath made our damage publike
Sorrow, pay we to thee the rights of Nature,
And inward griefe seale up with outward wayling.