(Elizabeth B. Browning: Rhyme of the Duchess May. ab. 1845.)
"Ah! what white thing at the door has cross'd,
Sister Helen?
Ah! what is this that sighs in the frost?"
"A soul that's lost as mine is lost,
Little brother!"
(O Mother, Mary Mother,
Lost, lost, all lost, between Hell and Heaven!)
(Rossetti: Sister Helen. 1870.)
Laetabundus
Exultet fidelis chorus,
Alleluia!
Egidio psallat coetus
Iste laetus,
Alleluia!
(St. Bernard: De Nativitate Domini.)
Sermone Marcus Tullius,
Fortuna Cesar Julius
Tibi non equantur.
Tibi summa prudentia,
Prefulgens et potentia
Celesti dono dantur.
(From a 12th c. MS.: Regulae de Rhythmis. In Schipper's Englische Metrik, vol. i. p. 354.)
Quant li solleiz conviset en leon
En icel tens qu'est ortus pliadon
Perunt matin,
Une pulcellet odit molt gent plorer
Et son ami dolcement regreter,
Ex si lli dis.
(Early French version of the Song of Songs, quoted in Lewis's Foreign Sources of Modern English Versification, p. 89.)
The special form of refrain stanza appearing in the first of these foreign specimens (the Alleluia hymn form) is generally thought to have been the source of the "tail-rime stanza" illustrated in the other two specimens, and in the several pages which follow. The characteristic feature of this stanza is the presence of two short lines riming together and serving as "tails" to the first and second parts of the body of the stanza. The same name appears in all the languages: "versus caudati" in the mediæval Latin, "rime couée" in the French, and "Schweifreim" in modern German. It is easy to see, what the following specimens illustrate, how stanzas constructed on this fundamental principle might be varied greatly in particular forms, according to the number, length, and rime-arrangement of the longer lines.