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

Think that already lost which thou must never gain."—Cowley.

The stanzas of seven verses are frequent enough in our poetry, especially among the ancients, who composed many of their poems in this sort of stanza; see the example of one of them taken from Spenser in the "Ruins of Time," where the first and third verses rhyme to one another, the second, fourth, and fifth, and the two last.

"But Fame with golden Wings aloft does fly

Above the Reach of ruinous Decay,

And with brave Plumes does beat the Azure Sky,

Admir'd of base-born Men from far away:

Then whoso will with virtuous Deeds assay,

To mount to Heaven, on Pegasus must ride,

And in sweet Poets verse be glorify'd."

I have rather chosen to take notice of this stanza, because that poet and Chaucer have made use of it in many of their poems, though they have not been followed in it by any of the moderns, whose stanzas of seven verses are generally composed as follows.