At the chill high tide of the night,
"At the turn of the fluctuant hours,
When the waters of time are at height,
In a vision arose on my sight

The kingdoms of earth and the powers.
(Swinburne: Tenebrae.)

aabbb:

Mary mine that art Mary's Rose,
Come in to me from the garden-close.

The sun sinks fast with the rising dew,

And we marked not how the faint moon grew;
But the hidden stars are calling you.

(Rossetti: Rose Mary.)

The six line stanza (sexain) is more frequently used than the five line. The following are a few of the forms which it may take:

ababcc:

He that loves a rosy cheek,

Or a coral lip admires,

Or from star-like eyes doth seek
Fuel to maintain his fires:

As old time makes these decay,

So his flames must waste away.

abbaab:

abbacc:

(Carew: Unfading Beauty.)

What thing unto mine ear

Wouldst thou convey-what secret thing,
O wandering water ever whispering?
Surely thy speech shall be of her.

Thou water, O thou whispering wanderer,
What message dost thou bring?

(Rossetti: Stream's Secret.)

Of Florence and of Beatrice

Servant and singer from of old,
O'er Dante's heart in youth had toll'd
The knell that gave his lady peace;
And now in manhood flew the dart
Wherewith his City pierced his heart.
(Rossetti: Dante at Verona.)

abcabc:

aabccb:

Fasten your hair with a golden pin,
And bind up every wandering tress;

I bade my heart build those poor rhymes:
It worked at them, day out, day in,
Building a sorrowful loveliness

Out of the battles of old times.

(W. B. Yeats: He Gives His Beloved Certain Rhymes.)

No time casts down, no time upraises,
Such loves, such memories, and such praises,
As need no grace of sun or shower
No saving screen of post or thunder,
To tend and house around and under

The imperishable and peerless flower.
(Swinburne: Age and Song.)

The only seven line stanza that has an acknowledged position in English verse is the rime royal. This seems to have been first used by Chaucer in his Complaint to Piety. It receives its name from the old French term chant-royal, applied to a type of poems with similar stanzas. It was used by King James I. of Scotland, in his charming old romantic story, the King's Quair, by other poets of the fifteenth century, and by Shakespeare in his Lucrece. It is composed of iambic pentameter lines rimed ababbcc. This scheme gives the very pleasing variation of alternate rimes blending into couplets. The association of the form with Middle English romance has given it the individuality that attaches to aristocratic lineage. William Morris is the only modern poet to revive the form. Examples are:

To Troilus right wonder wel with-alle

Gan for to lyke hir mening and hir chere,
Which somedel deynous was, for she leet fale

See below, p. 255.

Hir look a lite a-side, in swich manere,
Ascaunces, "what! may I not stonden here?”
And after that her loking gan she lighte,
That never thought him seen so good a sighte.
(Chaucer: Troilus, I, 1, 42.)

In a far country that I cannot name;
And on a year long ages past away,

A king there dwelt in rest and ease and fame,
And richer than the Emperor is to-day:

The very thought of what this man might say,
From dusk to dawn kept many a lord awake,
For fear of him did many a great man quake.
(Wm. Morris: Proud King.)

Other seven line forms that have been used are ababcca:

Dear and great Angel, wouldst thou only leave
That child, when thou hast done with him, for me!
Let me sit all the day here, that when eve
Shall find performed thy special ministry,
And time come for departure, thou, suspending
Thy flight, may'st see another child for tending,
Another still, to quiet and retrieve.

and ababccb:

(Browning: Guardian Angel.)

Weary of erring in this desert life,
Weary of hoping hopes forever vain,
Weary of struggling in all sterile strife,

Weary of thought which maketh nothing plain,
I close my eyes and calm my panting breath,

And pray to Thee, O ever quiet Death!

To come and soothe away my bitter pain!

(J. Thomson, "B. V.": To Our Ladies of Death.)

Stanzas of eight lines may be composed by doubling any form of quatrain, or by freely combining two different quatrains, with or without using tail-rime. The commonest

examples are those in the Hymnal, composed by doubling short, long, or common meter.

The best known form of eight line stanza, ottava rima, was borrowed from Italy by Wyatt and Surrey. The Elizabethans used it for long narrative and reflective pieces. It was revived in the nineteenth century by Byron, Keats, and others. It consists of iambic pentameter rimed abababcc:

O Love! O Glory! what are you who fly
Around us ever, rarely to alight?

There's not a meteor in the polar sky

Of such transcendent and more fleeting flight.
Chill, and chained to cold earth, we left on high
Our eyes in search of either lovely light:

A thousand and a thousand colors they
Assume, then leave us on our freezing way.

(Byron: Don Juan, VII, 1.)

The only recognized stanza form remaining to be considered is the Spenserian. This stanza, invented by Spenser for his Faery Queene, is composed of nine iambic lines, eight pentameters concluded by an alexandrine (hexameter), and rimed ababbcbcc:6

A gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine,
Ycladde in mightie armes and silver shielde,
Wherein old dents of deepe wounds did remaine,
The cruell markes of many a bloudie fielde;
Yet armes till that time did he never wield:
His angry steede did chide his foaming bitt,
As much disdayning to the curb to yield:
Full jolly knight he seemd and faire did sitt,

As one for knightly giusts and fierce encounters fitt.
(I, 1, 1.)

This highly wrought stanza lends itself to the expression For an interesting study of the Spenserian stanza, see H. Corson: op. cit., pp. 87-133.