[42] Tennyson's To Virgil, though it has nine stresses in each line and is therefore an exception to the statement made above, page 69, is shorter in respect of the number of syllables. There is, moreover, a poem, After Death, by Fanny Parnell, consisting of fourteen 10-stress lines. The cumbrousness of the rhythm is apparent in these two specimens—which are rather better than the others—
Ah, the harpings and the salvos and the shoutings of thy exiled sons returning!
I should hear, though dead and mouldered, and the grave-damps should not chill my bosom's burning.
The whole of this poem may be found in Sir Edward T. Cook's More Literary Recreations, p. 278.
[43] By a series of experiments C. R. Squire found a natural preference for duple over triple rhythms (though the triple rhythms seemed 'pleasanter'), and for trochaic and dactylic over iambic and anapestic. (Am. Journal of Psychology, vol. 12 (1901), p. 587.)
[44] Wordsworth and Mrs. Browning have written rimed septenaries.
[45] The usual and most convenient way of indicating stanzaic structure is with small italic letters for the rimes and either superior or inferior numbers for the number of stresses in each line. Thus Landor's Rose Aylmer:
Ah, what avails the sceptred race!
Ah, what the form divine!
What every virtue, every grace!
Rose Aylmer, all were thine.
is described as a4b3a4b3. The repetition of a whole line is indicated by a capital letter. When all the lines are of the same length, one exponent figure suffices, as abba4 for the In Memoriam stanza.
[46] See above, p. 66, n. 1.
[47] Byron follows now one model, now another. In Parisina he consciously tried the metrical scheme of Christabel.