Читать книгу English Verse - Raymond Macdonald Alden - Страница 58

In somer, when the shawes be sheyne,

And leves be large and long,

Hit is full mery in feyre foreste

To here the foulys song.

(Ballad of Robin Hood and the Monk. In Gummere's English Ballads, p. 77.)

This is the familiar stanza of the early ballads. The omission of rime in the third line signalizes the fact that the stanza could be (and was) regarded indifferently as made up either of two long lines or four short ones. Thus the famous Chevy Chase ballad is found (Ashmole Ms., of about 1560) written in long lines:

"The yngglyshe men hade ther bowys ybent yer hartes wer good ynoughe

The first off arros that the shote off seven skore spear-men the sloughe."

(See in Flügel's Neuenglisches Lesebuch, vol. i. p. 199.)

The same thing occurs also where there are two rimes to the stanza. Originally, the extra internal rime was no doubt the cause of the breaking up of the long couplet into two short lines. (See examples in Part Two, in the case of the septenary.)

Ye flowery banks o' bonnie Doon,

How can ye bloom sae fair!

How can ye chant, ye little birds,

And I sae fu' o' care!

(Burns: Bonnie Doon. ab. 1790.)