One would think she might like to retire
To the bower I have labour'd to rear;
Not a shrub that I heard her admire,
But I hasted and planted it there."
Shenstone often introduces eight syllables only, as in the following stanza:—
"Ye shepherds, so cheerful and gay,
Whose flocks never carelessly roam,
Should Corydon's happen to stray,
Oh! call the poor wanderers home."
But he here retains the proper rhythm of the measure of nine syllables, and the lines just quoted may rightly be looked on as still in that verse, though defective in a syllable. There are several modes of writing the same measure, different from that of Shenstone, but it may suffice to notice one instance:—