A Handbook of the English Language

by R. G. Latham

With hollow blasts of wind,

A damsel lay deploring,

All on a rock reclined.

2. Common octosyllabics.—Four measures, x a, with rhyme, and (unless the rhymes be double) eight syllables (octo syllabæ).—Butler's Hudibras, Scott's poems, The Giaour, and other poems of Lord Byron.

3. Elegiac octosyllabics.—Same as the last, except that the rhymes are regularly alternate, and the verses arranged in stanzas.

And on her lover's arm she leant,

And round her waist she felt it fold,

And far across the hills they went,

In that new world which now is old:

Across the hills and far away,