"Tho Iesu Crist an eorthe was, mylde weren his dede;"
and septenaries and alexandrines are used interchangeably. Dr. Triggs says, in his notes on the poem in McLean's edition of Zupitza's Übungsbuch, that lines 5, 6, 9-18, 25-28, 39, 40, 43, 44, 49-54, 57, 58, 63, 64, 66, 67, 70-72, 74, 75 are alexandrines. (Introduction, p. lxii.) The English tendency toward indifference to regularity in the counting of syllables is also noticeable. In the same way the early poem called "The Passion of our Lord" (ed. Morris, E.E.T.S. xlix. 37), which is thought from the heading—"Ici cumence la passyun ihesu crist en engleys"—to be a translation from the French, shows a preponderance of alexandrines, although it opens in septenary. See also such poems as the "Death," "Doomsday," etc., in the Old English Miscellany. The alexandrine was easily confused by the Middle English writers, not only with the septenary, but with the native "long line," and it is often difficult to say just what rhythm was in the writer's mind. Thus a line like
"Be stille, leve soster, thin herte the to-breke,"
from the Judas, may be regarded either as an alexandrine or a long four-stress line.
In Westsex was þan a kyng, his [name] was Sir Ine.
Whan he wist of the Bretons, of werre ne wild he fine.
Messengers he sent thorghout Inglond
Unto þe Inglis kynges, þat had it in þer hond,
And teld how þe Bretons, men of mykelle myght,
Þe lond wild wynne ageyn þorh force and fyght.
Hastisly ilkone þe kynges com fulle suythe,
Bolde men and stoute, þer hardinesse to kiþe.
In a grete Daneis felde þer þei samned alle,
Þat ever siþen hiderward Kampedene men kalle.
(Robert Manning of Brunne: Chronicle of Peter de Langtoft. Hearne ed., vol. i. p. 2. ab. 1325.)
This poem is one of the very few representatives of distinctly alexandrine verse in Middle English. The original poem being in alexandrines, Manning followed it closely. In the first part, however, he put rimes only at the ends of the verses, whereas later he introduced internal rime, thus resolving the verse into short lines of three stresses. Schipper observes that the four following lines are each representative of a familiar type of the French alexandrine:
"Messengers he sent þorghout Inglond
Unto the Inglis kynges, þat had it in þer hond."
"After Ethelbert com Elfrith his broþer,
Þat was Egbrihtes sonne and ȝit þer was an oþer."
(Englische Metrik, vol. i. p. 252.)