chere he on me loh;
With middel small ant wel y-make;
Bott he me wille to hire take,
For to buen hire owen make,
Long to lyven ichulle forsake,
Ant feye fallen a-doun.
An hendy hap, &c.

Nihtes when I wenke ant wake,
For-thi myn wonges waxeth won;
Levedi, al for thine sake
Longinge is ylent me on.
In world is non so wytor mon
That al hire bounte telle con;
Heir swyre is whittere than the swon
Ant fayrest may in toune.
An hendy hap, &c.

Icham for wouyng al for-wake,
Wery so water in wore
Lest any reve me my make
Ychabbe y-[y]yrned [y]ore.
Betere is tholien whyle sore
Then mournen evermore.
Geynest under gore,
Herkene to my roune.
An hendy hap, &c."

The next, "With longyng y am lad," is pretty, though less so: and is
in ten-line stanzas of sixes, rhymed _a a b, a a b, b a a b_. Those of
VIII. are twelve-lined in eights, rhymed _ab, ab, ab, ab, c, d, c, d_;
but it is observable that there is some assonance here instead of pure
rhyme. IX. is in the famous romance stanza of six or rather twelve
lines, _a la_ _Sir Thopas_; X. in octaves of eights alternately rhymed
with an envoy quatrain; XI. (a very pretty one) in a new metre, rhymed
_a a a b a, b_. And this variety continues after a fashion which it
would be tedious to particularise further. But it must be said that
the charm of "Alison" is fully caught up by--

"Lenten ys come with love to toune,
With blosmen ant with bryddes roune,
That al this blisse bringeth;
Dayes-eyes in this dales,
Notes suete of nytengales,
Ilk foul song singeth;"

by a sturdy Praise of Women which charges gallantly against the usual
mediaeval slanders; and by a piece which, with "Alison," is the flower
of the whole, and has the exquisite refrain--

"Blow, northerne wynd,
Send thou me my suetyng,
Blow, northerne wynd, blou, blou, blou"--

Here is Tennysonian verse five hundred years before Tennyson. The
"cry" of English lyric is on this northern wind at last; and it shall
never fail afterwards.

[Sidenote: _The prosody of the modern languages._]

[Sidenote: _Historical retrospect._]

This seems to be the best place to deal, not merely with the form of
English lyric in itself, but with the general subject of the prosody
as well of English as of the other modern literary languages. A very
great[100] deal