I had no human fears: (b)

She seemed a thing that could not feel (a)

The touch of earthly years, (b) (W. Wordsworth)

or enclosing rhymes (охватные, опоясанные рифмы), with the pattern abba:

Much have I travel!'d in the realms of gold, (a)

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; (b)

Round many western islands have I been (b)

Which bards in fealty (= loyalty) to Apollo hold, (a) (J. Keats)

There may also be more complicated variations of these patterns:

Rough wind, that moanest loud (a)

Grief too sad for song; (b)

Wild wind, when sullen cloud (a)

Knells all the night long;(b)

Sad storm, whose tears are vain, (c)

Bare woods, whose branches stain, (c)

Deep caves and dreary main, — (c )

Wail for the world's wrong! (b) (Shelley)

Note also the possibility of the so called eye-rhyme (гpaфическая рифма), when the elements rhymed are similar only in spelling, but not in pronunciation:

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store ?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind. (J. Keats)

For us, even banquets fond regret supply

In the red cup that crowns our memory. (Byron)

Types of Stanza (типы строф, строфика)

The most common stanza, one consisting of four lines, is called a quatrain (катрен, четверостишие); the more seldom one, consisting of two, is called a couplet (двустишие).

There is also a ballad stanza, typical of poetic folklore, especially that of the 14^th—15^th centuries. A ballad is a poem with a plot (сюжет), which tells some story. The ballad stanza usually has four lines, of which the first and third lines contain four feet, while the second and fourth — three or two.

The first word that Sir Patrick read, (4 feet)

Sue loud, loud laughed he; (3)

The neist word that Sir Patrick read, (4)

The tear blinded his ee. (3)

This type of stanza is also found in later poetry:

The fairest one shall be my love's, (4 feet)

The fairest castle of the nine! (3)

Wait only till the stars peep out, (4)

The fairest shall be thine. (3) (Coleridge)

In r. Kipling's ballad cited below, the quatrains are combined into couplets, within which, however, is preserved the alternation of four-foot and three-foot metres:

Oh, East is East, and West is West, (4) and never the twain shall meet (3)

Till Earth and Sky stand presently (4) at God's great Judgement Seat (3).

A specific type of stanza is used in a sonnet. There we usually find twelve lines (three quatrains, i.e. three stanzas with four lines), followed by two final lines (a couplet), which contain a kind of summary of the whole verse:

O, lest the world should ask you to recite

What merit lived in me, that you should love,

After my death, dear love, forget me quite,

For you in me can nothing worthy prove;

Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,

To do more for me than mine own desert,

And hang more praise upon deceased I

Than niggard truth would willingly impart:

0, Lest your true love may seem false in this,

That you for love speak well of me untrue,

My name be buried where my body is,

And live no more to shame nor me nor you.

For I am ashamed by that which I bring forth,

And so should you, to love things nothing worth. (Shakespeare, Sonnet No. 72)

There may also be blank verse (белый стих), in which there is no rhyming, but the rhythm and metre are to some extent preserved; such is, for instance, the verse of Shakespeare's tragedies:

To be or not to be, — that is the question: -

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them? — To die, — to sleep, -

No more', and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to, — 'tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished. To die, — to sleep', -

To sleep! Perchance to dream: — ay, there's the rub',

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil... (Hamlet)

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