(Sir Philip Sidney: Psalm viii. ab. 1580.)
A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew,
And the young winds fed it with silver dew,
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light,
And closed them beneath the kisses of night.
(Shelley: The Sensitive Plant. 1820.)
abcb
In somer, when the shawes be sheyne,
And leves be large and long,
Hit is full mery in feyre foreste
To here the foulys song.
(Ballad of Robin Hood and the Monk. In Gummere's English Ballads, p. 77.)
This is the familiar stanza of the early ballads. The omission of rime in the third line signalizes the fact that the stanza could be (and was) regarded indifferently as made up either of two long lines or four short ones. Thus the famous Chevy Chase ballad is found (Ashmole Ms., of about 1560) written in long lines:
"The yngglyshe men hade ther bowys ybent yer hartes wer good ynoughe
The first off arros that the shote off seven skore spear-men the sloughe."
(See in Flügel's Neuenglisches Lesebuch, vol. i. p. 199.)