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

Where the rhymes follow one another, and the six first verses consist of eight syllables each, the two last of ten.

We have another sort of stanza of eight verses, where the fourth rhymes to the first, the third to the second, and the four last are two couplets; and where the first, fourth, sixth, and eighth are of ten syllables each, the four others but of eight; as,

"I've often wish'd to love: What shall I do?

Me still the cruel Boy does spare;

And I a double Task must bear,

First to woo him, and then a Mistress too.

Come at last, and strike for shame,

If thou art any Thing besides a Name;

I'll think thee else no God to be,

But Poets rather Gods, who first created thee."—Cowley.