Practical Guide to English Versification / With a Compendious Dictionary of Rhymes, an Examination / of Classical Measures, and Comments Upon Burlesque and / Comic Verse, Vers de Société, and Song-writing

by Tom Hood

"Move your feet

To our sound,

Whiles we greet

All this ground."

In verses of four syllables, again, pretty long poems have actually been composed, and particularly by John Skelton, a poet of the time of Henry VIII. Much of what he wrote was sheer doggerel, no doubt being rendered so partly by the nature of his own talent and disposition, and partly because his chosen form of verse would scarcely admit of the conveyance of serious sentiments. Now and then, however, he does contrive to make his miniature lines interesting, as in the following address to Mistress Margaret Hussey:—

"Merry Margaret,

As midsummer flower,

Gentle as falcon,

Or hawk of the tower;

With solace and gladness,