As apposite to this, I may quote what he elsewhere says of octosyllabic verse: "The thought can turn itself with greater ease in a larger compass.
First there is the original French poem--a romantic tale in verse written in the regular French short couplets of octosyllabic lines--well and correctly written by a man of English birth.
To them enters a chasqui, or messenger, who describes the result of Rumi-naui's treachery in octosyllabic quatrains.
FN#26] In the original Quichua, Ollantay makes his appeal to the Inca in quatrains of octosyllabic verses, the first line rhyming with the last, and the second with the third.
In the third scene Ollantay prefers his suit to the Inca Pachacuti in octosyllabic quatrains, the first and last lines rhyming, and the second and third.
Songs and important speeches are in quatrains of octosyllabic lines, the first and last rhyming, and the second and third.
I have endeavoured to keep to octosyllabic lines as far as possible, because they give a better idea of the original; and I have also tried to preserve the form of the songs and speeches.
The romances are in octosyllabic couplets or in prose, and their language is different from that of the chansons, and contains much fewer of the usual epic repetitions and stock phrases.
At the same time as Walter Map, or a little later, Chretien (or Chrestien) de Troyes threw the legends of the Round Table into octosyllabic verse of a singularly spirited and picturesque character.
The Trojan romances, on the other hand, are chiefly in octosyllabic verse, and the principal poem which treats of them is the Roman de Troie of Benoit de Sainte More.
Poet, is known as the author of The Spleen, a lively and original poem in octosyllabic verse on the subject of low spirits and the best means of prevention and cure.
Abandoning that narrative verse form, he strikes a true lyric note in the Cántica de la Virgen, a somewhat irregular octosyllabic song inserted in his longer poem, El duelo de la Virgen.
The manner of the poem is that of the French and Provençal pastourelles, pastorelas, whose octosyllabic metre is also imitated, somewhat irregularly, by the Spanish poet.
In this song the author abandons the cuaderna vía for the octosyllabic verse.
Note the inner rhymes in the longer lines, which might also be divided into octosyllabic verses.
This octosyllabicsong begins with stanza 830 of the Rimado de Palacio.
Andrew Marvell, a very moderate Puritan, joined with Milton in his office of Latin Secretary under Cromwell, wrote much poetry of various sorts, some of it in the Elizabethan octosyllabic couplet.
It is in stanzas, every one an octosyllabic triplet, which you will think odd, and I have not sanguinity enough to defend.
One of your best puns, if not the best, Hatching succession apostolical, With other falsehoods diabolical, lies in an octosyllabic couplet; and what business has that in your heroic libel?
The added length is partly explained by meter: Mandeville's octosyllabic line is less capacious, as a rule, than La Fontaine's flexible one.
I did not make literature of the Greeks, but I got a whole tragedy out of the Romans; it was a rhymed tragedy, and in octosyllabic verse, like the "Lady of the Lake.
These would, perhaps, have fascinated any boy, but I had such a fanaticism for methodical verse that any variation from the octosyllabic and decasyllabic couplets was painful to me.
With the Courts of Love which he introduced into Portugal came the substitution of the Limousin decasyllabic for the nationaloctosyllabic metre, and the ancient forms were lost in the intricacies of the "ritournelle.
With the second, consisting of 7699 octosyllabic verses, like those in which "The House of Fame" is written, it was found impossible to deal in the present edition.
The two most usual forms are that with octosyllabic and that with decasyllabic lines.
The Rondeau Redouble is written in six octosyllabic quatrains, rhyming on two alternate rhymes, with half the initial line used (unrhymed) after the last verse.
But the exultant strain ceases and the poet himself speaks, and with the transition in feeling comes a change in the verse; the minstrel's song was in the octosyllabic couplet associated with metrical romance.
This is also in octosyllabic verses, and is further remarkable for the opulence of its imagery and its variety of description.
This poem, esteemed by the French as the finest of their old romances, was rendered by Chaucer, with considerable alterations and improvements, into octosyllabic verse.
The poem is written in Alexandrine verses, which may be divided into octosyllabic lines, alternating with those of six syllables, as in the extract given above.
Byron spoke of the octosyllabic verse as having about it "a fatal facility"—meaning that, from its simple brevity of construction, it was too apt to degenerate into doggerel.
Tennyson's "In Memoriam" is composed inoctosyllabic quatrains.
Nearly the same thing may be said of the octosyllabic verse, also written commonly in couplets, when used in long compositions.
At the same time, poems of the very highest class, epic or didactic, have never been composed in the octosyllabic measure.
The octosyllabicmeasure has been long the most common, if not the most popular, of all forms of English verse.
Dyer who is best seen in the octosyllabic metre, chose it also for The Country Walk, a poem in which, notwithstanding an occasional lapse into the conventional diction of the period, the rural pictures are drawn from life.
Green's poems, written in octosyllabic metre, were published after his death.
Swift made use of the octosyllabic couplet in nearly all his verse, and with no little vigor and originality.
Butler made the octosyllabic couplet so entirely his own, for the purposes of his jogging satiric verse, that ever since it has frequently been called "Hudibrastic.
Mr. Gosse speaks of Parnell's employment of the octosyllabic couplet in this poem as "wonderfully subtle and harmonious.
The first group is made up of the various descendants of the original "long line," sometimes rimed and sometimes unrimed; the second group of forms of the familiar octosyllabic couplet.
This poem is sometimes said to show the first appearance of the octosyllabiccouplet in English.
This is supposed to have been a work of the eleventh or very early twelfth century, composed in octosyllabic verses, and in the mixed dialect common at the time in the south-east, by Alberic or Auberi of Besancon or Briancon.
But it retains the octosyllabic metre, and its general scheme, despite a somewhat greater involution of plot and multiplicity of characters, is that of a farce.
These tales are for the most part written in octosyllabic couplets on the model of Chrestien, but a very few, such as Brun de la Montaigne, imitate the exterior characteristics of the Chanson.
Their versification is at first somewhat licentious, but by degrees they settled down into more or less regular employment of the octosyllabic couplet.
The simplest and oldest was called simply vers; it had few artificial rules, was written in octosyllabic lines, and arranged in stanzas.
But the most famous of its examples, those which now pass under the name of Marie de France, are narrative poems in octosyllabic verse and varying in length considerably.
Ruteboeuf's favourite metres are either the continuous octosyllabic couplet, or else a stanza composed of an octosyllabic couplet and a line of four syllables, the termination of the latter being caught up by the succeeding couplet.
This is a poem not much shorter than the Voir Dit, but continuouslyoctosyllabic and very spirited.
All these pieces kept the octosyllabic verse which the farce had consecrated.
This is a very interesting poem consisting of more than 9000 lines, mostly octosyllabic couplets, with ballades, etc.
Their versification is always octosyllabic and regular.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "octosyllabic" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
