And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring.
Let them smile as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling.
—Holmes.
3.
The upper air burst into life;
And a hundred fire flags sheen,
To and fro they were hurried about;
And to and fro, and in and out,
The wan stars danced between.
—Coleridge.
The Spenserian stanza consists of nine lines: the first eight are iambic pentameters, and the last line is an iambic hexameter or Alexandrine. Burns makes use of this stanza in The Cotter's Saturday Night. The following stanza from that poem shows the plan of the rhymes:—
O Scotia! my dear, my native soil!
For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent!
Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil
Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content!
And oh! may Heaven their simple lives prevent
From luxury's contagion, weak and vile!
Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent,
A virtuous populace may rise the while,
And stand a wall of fire around their much beloved isle.
EXERCISES
A. Scan the following:—
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.