This verse appears in two great divisions, rimed (the decasyllabic couplet) and unrimed (blank verse). The rimed form was the earlier, the unrimed being merely a modification of it under the influence of other unrimed metres.
A.—THE DECASYLLABIC COUPLET
Lutel wot hit anymon,
hou love hym haveþ ybounde,
Þat for us oþe rode ron,
ant boht us wiþ is wounde.
Þe love of hym us haveþ ymaked sounde,
ant ycast þe grimly gost to grounde.
Ever & oo, nyht & day, he haveþ us in is þohte,
He nul nout leose þat he so deore bohte.
His deope wounde bledeþ fast,
of hem we ohte munne!
He haþ ous out of helle ycast,
ybroht us out of sunne;
ffor love of us his wonges waxeþ þunne,
His herte blod he ȝaf for al mon kunne.
Ever & oo, etc.
(Song from Harleian MS. 2253. In Böddeker's Altenglische Dichtungen, p. 231.)
This early religious lyric is of interest as containing the first known use of the five-stress couplet in English. Here it is only in a few lines that the couplet occurs, and so sporadic an occurrence should perhaps be regarded as due to nothing more than chance. See Schipper, vol. i. p. 439, and ten Brink's Chaucer's Sprache und Verskunst, p. 173 f. Ten Brink calls attention to another fairly regular five-stress verse, found on p. 253 of Wright's Political Songs:
"For miht is riht, the loud is laweless."[19]