- description
- # Openser’s seven-line stanza.
## Overview
This is a subsection titled "Openser’s seven-line stanza." extracted from a text file, discussing the use of the seven-line stanza in English poetry, particularly in the context of Shakespeare's *Lucrece*. It was extracted on January 30, 2026.
## Context
This subsection is part of section "III" within the file [pdf-01KG6Q7Q25RHMFT3SJXPV18VFF.txt](arke:01KG6S2X2EBB305ENM00G16GWA) and is part of the [PDF Workflow Main Test 2026-01-30T00:26:53](arke:01KG6NWQ2H2K4PGG7H4ZHYCZ3Y) collection. It follows the [Introduction](arke:01KG6S6KNXGHMS915QG45ER6RE) and precedes the subsection titled [Early criticism.](arke:01KG6S6KP08BDEMGHB7ZJEVN8N).
## Contents
The subsection focuses on the seven-line stanza, a popular form in English literature before and during the Elizabethan era. It highlights Spenser's use of the stanza in *Ruines of Time* (1590) as an example anticipating Shakespeare's cadences. The text provides an example of Spenser's stanza. It also mentions other Elizabethan poets like Greene, Davis, Barnfield, and Drayton who employed the seven-line stanza, and notes Nicholas Breton's frequent use of it. A footnote refers to [Page 162](arke:01KG6QCD0CJ4447E66KTZ83R0X) of the source document.
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- description_title
- Openser’s seven-line stanza.
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- text
- Openser’s seven-line stanza.
Of English poems in the metre which were written shortly before Shakespeare penned his *Lucrece*, the most memorable is Spenser’s *Ruines of Time*, published in 1590, in which Shakespeare’s cadences seem almost precisely anticipated. The following is a good example of the stanza in Spenser’s hands:—
But Fame with golden wings aloft doth flie,
Above the reach of ruinous decay,
And with brave plumes doth beate the azure skie,
Admir’d of base-borne men from far away:
Then, who so will with vertuous deeds assay
To mount to heaven, on Pegasus must ride,
And with sweete Poets verse be glorifide.
Greene’s *A Maidens Dreame, An elegy on Sir Christopher Hatton*,
¹ Spenser employed the seven-line stanza with a different scheme of rhyming (ababcbc) in his *Daphnaida*, 1591, but in his *Hymnes*, 1596, he returned to the Shakespearean plan. Among the Elizabethan poets who used the seven-line stanza in long poems immediately after *Lucrece* were (Sir) John Davis in his *Orchestra*, 1594; Barnfield in *Complaint of Chastitie* and *Shepherds Content*, 1594; Drayton in *Mertimeriades*, 1596, and parts of *Harmonie of the Church*, 1596. At a little later date Nicholas Breton employed it constantly; cf. his *Pasquils Passe and Passeth* not, 1600; *Longing of a Blessed Heart*, 1601; *Pasquils Mad Cappe*, 1626.
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LUCRECE 23
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- Openser’s seven-line stanza.