poems, in the legend of Cecilia, Troilus and Criseyde, The Parlement of Foules ABC., The Former Age, Fortune, To Rosemounde, The Monkes Tale. But since the stanza form for a long poem like Troilus and Criseyde (1378-80) had many disadvantages, he attempted the short rimed couplet again in Hous of Fame (1384), and since the short verses did not suit him, he used rimed couplets of five feet in the Legend of Good Women (1385), so too in the Prologue, the connecting links and most of the stories of the Canterbury Tales (1387 ff.). Those of the stories which are written in stanzas are probably earlier work (except Sir Thopas), and were included later in the Canterbury Tales. For examples of the seven-line and eight-line stanzas see § 194 f.; the passages below will serve as examples of the heroic couplet; Prologue to C. T.: Whan that Aprille with his shoures swote The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende That hem hath holpen whan that they were seke. 285 A Clerk ther was of Oxenford also That unto logik hadde longe y-go. 295 Of Aristotle and his philosophye Than robes riche or fithele or gay sautrye. Of hem that yaf him wher-with to scoleye. And short and quik and ful of hy sentence. § 187. The Heroic Verse (cont.). This verse, which Chaucer introduced, has remained the most important in English poetry. It is used in rimed couplets (heroic couplet) and without rime (blank verse). The verse of five feet has many advantages over longer and shorter verses. It admits of many variations, and in this may be compared with the classical hexameter or the Old Germanic alliterative verse. The foundation is clear and simple: ×××××××× xx(x); it can consist of monosyllables or of polysyllables, e.g. Of hand, of foot, of lips, of eyes, of brow (Shakespeare), Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens and shades of death (Milton), Inhospitable hospitality (Wycherley). It can assume very different appearances: I am no orator as Brutus is (21 letters), Show you sweet Caesar's wounds, poor, poor, dumb mouths (42 letters). The verse of five feet gives the poet a greater opportunity to adorn the poetic diction than the short rimed couplet. If we omit in each line of Gray's Elegy an ornamental word, as Morton has done (Mod. Lang. Notes 21 [1906], 219 ff.), we get insipid verses with four feet: Now fades the landscape on the sight And all the air a stillness holds Save that, from yonder ivied tower, The owl does to the moon complain Of such as, wand'ring near her tower, NOTE. Scott, however, in the same way omitted ornamental words from the opening verses of Pope's translation of the Iliad, and asserted that the short rimed couplet is "more congenial to the English language, more favourable to narrative poetry at least, than that which has been commonly termed heroic verse;" cp. Ch. D. Yonge Life of Sir W. Scott, p. 51 (Great Writers). On the other hand the verse is not too long. It can be felt as a metrical unity, and there is no necessity to divide it into two parts as is the case with the alexandrine and the septenary. But a strong or weak pause within the verse is allowed, and the fact that the caesura is not fixed and varies in strength does much to enliven the verse (cp. § 191). But wherever the caesura is, the verse can never be divided into two exactly similar divisions and thus become monotonous, as is the case with the English alexandrine (§ 212); for even if the caesura comes after the fifth syllable, the two divisions, though equal in the number of syllables, are quite different in rhythmical structure (××××× and xxxxx) e.g. That únto lógik || hádde lónge ygó. More important is the fact that the verse admits of very great variety owing to the various quality the stresses may have and the possibility of inversion. The various degrees of stress may be shown by putting the figures (0 =unstressed, weakly stressed, 2 strongly stressed) under the syllables; or the unstressed syllables may be marked x and the stressed a; cp. Mayor, A Handbook of Modern English Metre, p. 100 ff. The following scheme clearly shows the quality and 1 = = position of the stresses, together with the sentence pauses. Unstressed syllables are marked x, the five stresses a, b, c, d, e, a weaker stress or a 'stronger thesis' is shown by the corresponding Greek a, B, 7, 8, ɛ, and inversion by ax or ax. The strong pauses are marked |. The lines quoted in § 186 then have the following appearance: Cant. Tales A, 1-18: xax xc xoxex| 15 xax xax xcxo xex Cant. Tales A,285-308: 285 xax xcxo xe aaxbx yx dxe| xaxbxc ddxex axbx c xdxe 295 xax8 xyxoxex xaxẞ y yxdxex xaxb xcxdxex aa xbxcx dxex xax xc xdxex. As will be seen scarcely any two verses are ex actly alike; but according to the grouping of the |