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

Teach Womankind Inconstancy and Pride,

See if your Diligence there will useful prove;

But prithee teach not me to love."

Section VI.—Of the stanzas that consist of an odd

number of verses.

We have also stanzas that consist of odd numbers of verses, as of five, seven, nine, and eleven; in all which it of necessity follows that three verses of the stanza rhyme to one another, or that one of them be a blank verse.

In the stanzas of five verses the first and third may rhyme, and the second and two last; as,

"See not my Love how Time resumes

The Beauty which he lent these Flow'rs:

Tho' none should taste of their Perfumes,