V
publike
nature
sorrow
damage
wayling
fortune
VI
fortune
publike
wayling
nature
damage
sorrow
The envoy is:
Since sorrow, then, concludeth all our fortune,
With all our deaths shew we this damage publique:
His nature feares to dye, who lives still wayling.
This strict form of the sextain, which in Sidney, pp. 216–17 (219–21, xxx), occurs even with a twofold rhyming system, but, of course, with only one envoy, has, as far as we know, only once been imitated in modern poetry, viz. by E. W. Gosse (New Poems). Cf. Metrik, ii, § 576
§ 321. Besides this original form of the sextain several other varieties are met with in English poetry. Thus Spenser, in the eighth eclogue of his Shepherd’s Calendar (pp. 471–2), has a sextain of a somewhat different structure, the rhymeless end-words being arranged in this order: a b c d e f. f a b c d e. e f a b c d. d e f a b c. c d e f a b. b c d e f a + (a) b (c) d (e) f. Here the final word of the last verse of the first stanza, it is true, is also used as final word in the first verse of the second stanza, but the order of the final words of the other verses of the first stanza remains unchanged in the second. The same relation of the end-words exists between st. ii to st. iii, between st. iii to st. iv, &c., and lastly between st. vi and the envoy; the envoy, again, has the end-words of the first stanza; those which have their place in the interior of the verse occur at the end of the third measure.
Some other sub-varieties of the sextain have rhyming final words in each stanza.
In Sidney’s Arcadia, p. 443 (430–1, lxxvi), e.g. one sextain has the following end-words: light, treasure, might, pleasure, direction, affection. These end-words recur in the following stanzas in the order of the regular sextain; hence st. ii has affection, light, direction, treasure, pleasure, might, &c. In this variety, also, the rhyme-words of the envoy occur at a fixed place, viz. at the end of the second measure. Drummond wrote two sextains of the same elegant form.