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The N.Z. Journal of Science and Technology. [July 
Another common form taken by the Romance verse is that in which 
two full verses, not two lines, rime together :— 
Ye banks and braes o’ bonnie Boon, 
how can ye bloom sae fresh and fair ! 
How can ye sing, ye little birds, 
when I’m sae weary, fu’ o’ care! 
It is this verse-rimed form that varies in three ways. It may drop its last 
unit, resulting in the Ballad verse of seven units, as in Burns’s first draft 
of Bonnie Doon :— 
Ye banks and braes o’ bonnie Doon, 
How can ye bloom sae fair ! 
How can ye sing, ye little birds, 
When I’m sae fu’ o’ care ! 
A most distinct pause now takes the place of the dropped unit. The 
Ballad verse may vary by dropping the last syllables of the first and third 
lines—-that is, the Romance verse may vary by dropping this syllable as well 
as the last unit:—- 
From Greenland’s icy mountains. 
From India’s coral strand. 
The difference between this and the ordinary Ballad verse is made more 
evident when the two different verses occur together :— 
Then out spake bold Horatius, 
The captain of the gate : 
To every man upon this earth 
Death cometh soon or late. 
The third variation is brought about by the dropping of the fourth as well 
as the eighth unit :—- 
And if I took it twice, 
A shame it were to me ; 
And truly, gentle knight, 
Welcome art thou to me. 
The difference is again made more evident by juxtaposing the two verses:— 
In court whoso demaundes 
What dame doth most excel, 
For my conceit I must needs say 
Fair Bridges bears the bell. 
The second of these three variations has been used for the great epic of 
Germany, the “ Nibelungen Noth,” and it has for this reason been called 
the Nibelungen metre. The third was first used to any great extent in a 
long poem on Alexander, and it has therefore been called the Alexandrine 
metre. The four metres, Romance, Ballad, Nibelungen, and Alexandrine, 
form the basic metres of all lyric poetry. 
Remembering that when the full verse of eight units developed poetry 
was commonly sung or recited, it will be evident that great regard would 
naturally be had to facility of delivery. In speech, a sentence consists of 
as much thought as may be conveyed readily on one breath : the more 
broken a complete thought is in utterance, the less forcible it becomes ; 
and it follows that the most incisively uttered thought is that which, the 
matter of thought being equal, can be uttered distinctly in one breath. It 
has been noted that as the speech becomes emotional it tends to become 
rhythmical; and the earliest poetry is rhythmical in nature, not metrical: 
that is, the sentences vary in length according as the thoughts vary. In 
poetry that has become metrical, however, they tend to assume a uniform 
