(William Warner: Albion's England, ll. 1-8. 1586.)
Here we have the measure in its "resolved" or divided form, printed as short four-stress and three-stress lines, although with rime only at the seventh stress. Compare the "common metre" of modern hymns:
"Must I be carried to the skies
On flowery beds of ease,
While others fought to win the prize
And sailed through bloody seas?"
As when about the silver moon, when air is free from wind,
And stars shine clear, to whose sweet beams, high prospects, and the brows
Of all steep hills and pinnacles, thrust up themselves for shows,
And even the lowly valleys joy to glitter in their sight,
When the unmeasured firmament bursts to disclose her light,
And all the signs in heaven are seen, that glad the shepherd's heart;
So many fires disclosed their beams, made by the Trojan part,
Before the face of Ilion, and her bright turrets show'd.
A thousand courts of guard kept fires, and every guard allow'd
Fifty stout men, by whom their horse eat oats and hard white corn,
And all did wishfully expect the silver-throned morn.
(Chapman: Iliad, book VIII. 1610.)
Chapman's translation of Iliad is the longest modern English poem in septenaries. Professor Newman, however (whose translation gave rise to Matthew Arnold's lectures On Translating Homer), used the same measure unrimed and with feminine endings; thus,—
"He spake, and yelling, held afront the single-hoofed horses."
Arnold objected to Chapman's measure that "it has a jogging rapidity rather than a flowing rapidity, and a movement familiar rather than nobly easy."
Rejoice, oh, English hearts, rejoice! rejoice, oh, lovers dear!
Rejoice, oh, city, town and country! rejoice, eke every shire!
For now the fragrant flowers do spring and sprout in seemly sort,
The little birds do sit and sing, the lambs do make fine sport;
And now the birchen-tree doth bud, that makes the schoolboy cry;
The morris rings, while hobby-horse doth foot it feateously;
The lords and ladies now abroad, for their disport and play,
Do kiss sometimes upon the grass, and sometimes in the hay.
(Beaumont: The Knight of the Burning Pestle, IV. v. ab. 1610.)