the first part of the seventeenth century. traced in part to the influence of Donne.

It may perhaps be

Where the quiet-colored end of evening smiles
Miles and miles

On the solitary pastures where our sheep

Half-asleep

Tinkle homeward thro' the twilight, stray or stop
As they crop.

(BROWNING: Love among the Ruins. 1855.)

Compare with this (although it is not divided into stanzas) Herrick's Thanksgiving to God:

Lord, thou hast given me a cell
Wherein to dwell;

A little house, whose humble roof
Is weatherproof;

Under the spars of which I lie
Both soft and dry.

When God at first made Man,

Having a glass of blessings standing by,
Let us (said He) pour on him all we can:
Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie,

Contract into a span.

(GEORGE HERBERT: The Gifts of God. 1631.)

The following specimens illustrate various forms of stanzas distinguished by arrangement of rime, without reference to the length of lines:

abccb

In vain, through every changeful year
Did Nature lead him as before;
A primrose by a river's brim.

A yellow primrose was to him,

And it was nothing more.

ababb

(WORDSWORTH: Peter Bell. 1798.)

Survival of the fittest, adaptation,
And all their other evolution terms,
Seem to omit one small consideration,

To wit, that tumblebugs and angleworms

aabbb

Have souls there's soul in everything that squirms. (WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY: The Menagerie. 1901.)

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.

aabcdd

(ROSSETTI: Rose Mary. 1881.)

Hail seint michel, with the lange sper!
Fair beth thi winges: up thi scholder
Thou hast a rede kirtil a non to thi fote.
Thou ert best angle that ever god makid.
This vers is ful wel i-wrozt;

Hit is of wel furre y-brozt.

(Satire on the People of Kildare, from Harleian Ms. 913; in Guest's English Rhythms, Skeat ed., p. 616.)

aaaabb

ababab

ababcc

What beauty would have lovely styled,
What manners pretty, nature mild,
What wonder perfect, all were filed
Upon record in this blest child.
And till the coming of the soul
To fetch the flesh, we keep the roll.

(BEN JONSON: Epitaph; Underwoods, liii. 1616.)

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies:
And all that's best of dark or bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

(BYRON She Walks in Beauty. 1815.)

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

(WORDSWORTH: I wandered lonely as a cloud. 1804.)

O, how her eyes and tears did lend and borrow!
Her eyes seen in her tears, tears in her eye;
Both crystals, where they view'd each other's sorrow,
Sorrow that friendly sighs sought still to dry;

But like a stormy day, now wind, now rain,
Sighs dry her cheeks, tears make them wet again.
(SHAKSPERE: Venus and Adonis, st. 161. 1593.)

ababbcc ("Rime royal")

Humblest of herte, hyest of reverence,
Benigne flour, coroune of vertues alle,
Sheweth unto your rial excellence
Your servaunt, if I durste me so calle,
His mortal harm, in which he is y-falle,
And noght al only for his evel fare,
But for your renoun, as he shal declare.

(CHAUCER: Compleynte unto Pite. ab. 1370.)

And on the smale grene twistis sat
The lytil suete nyghtingale, and song
So loud and clere, the ympnis consecrat
Of luvis use, now soft now lowd among,
That all the gardynis and the wallis rong
Ryght of thaire song, and on the copill next
Of thaire suete armony, and lo the text.

(JAMES I. of Scotland: The King's Quhair, st. 33. ab. 1425.)

For men have marble, women waxen, minds,

And therefore are they form'd as marble will;

The weak oppress'd, the impression of strange kinds

Is form'd in them by force, by fraud, or skill:
Then call them not the authors of their ill,
No more than wax shall be accounted evil,
Wherein is stamp'd the semblance of a devil.

(SHAKSPERE: The Rape of Lucrece, st. 178. 1594.)

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.

(WILLIAM MORRIS: The Earthly Paradise; The Proud
King. 1868.)

The "rime royal" stanza is one of Chaucer's contributions to English verse, and about 14,000 lines of his poetry are in this form. Its use by King James in the King's Quhair was formerly thought to be the source of the name; but it seems more likely that the name, like the form, was of French origin, and is to be connected with such terms as chant royal and ballat royal, familiar in the nomenclature of courtly poetry (see Schipper, vol. i. p. 426). The stanza was used by Chaucer with marvellous skill for purposes of continuous narrative, and was a general favorite among his imitators in the fifteenth century, being used by Lydgate, Occleve, Hawes, Dunbar, then by Skelton, and by Barclay in the Ship of Fooles. It appears popular as late as the time of Sackville's part of the Mirror for Magistrates (1563).* Later than Shakspere's Rape of Lucrece it is rarely found. (But see Milton's unfinished poem on The Passion, where he used a form of the rime royal with concluding alexandrine.)

Strictly speaking, the "rime royal" is always in five-stress verse, but in the following specimen the same rime-scheme appears in the irregular six-or-seven-stress verse of one of the Mysteries.

Gascoigne, in his Notes of Instruction (1575), mentions this form of stanza as "a royall kinde of verse, serving best for grave discourses," a statement in which he is followed by King James in his Reulis and Cautelis (1585). Puttenham, in the Arte of English Poesie (1589), speaks of the stanza as "the chiefe of our ancient proportions used by any rimer writing any thing of historical or grave poeme, as ye may see in Chaucer and Lidgate." (Arber Reprint, p. 80.)