_With Pégasús upón a dáy, Apóllo wéary flýing, Through frósty hílls the jóurney láy, On fóot the wáy was plýing._
In ballad poetry, on the other hand, the Septenary metre tends to assume a somewhat freer construction, similar to, though not so capricious as that in the old ballads edited by Percy. A well-known example is offered by Coleridge's _Rime of the Ancient Mariner_:
_It ís an áncient Márinér, | And he stoppeth óne of thrée: 'By thy lóng grey béard and glíttering éye, | Now whérefore stópp'st thou mé?'_
Two unaccented opening syllables and two unaccented syllables in the middle of the line are, in particular, often met with.
§ =141. The Septenary in combination with other metres.= After its occurrence in the _Moral Ode_ and the _Ormulum_ the Septenary, as we have seen, appears at first very seldom by itself, but generally in connexion with other metres, especially the old long line in its freer development, the four-foot metre (though more rarely), and, particularly, the Alexandrine.
The Middle English Alexandrine was constructed on the model of the Old French Alexandrine--except for the use of Teutonic licences in even-beat rhythm--and it thus possessed four different types, which the following examples from _On god Ureison of ure Lefdi_[146] may serve to illustrate. We give the corresponding Old French metrical types from the _Roman d'Alixandre_ (Bartsch, _Chrestomathie de l'ancien français_, p. 175).
_a._ Masculine caesura with masculine line-ending:
_En icele forest, | dont voz m'oëz conter._ 24.
_Nim nu [gh]éme to mé, | so me bést a béo ðe béo._ 129.
_b._ Feminine (epic) caesura with masculine line-ending:
_nesune male choze | ne puet laianz entrer._ 25.
_vor þín is þé wurchípe, | [gh]if ich wrécche wel iþéo._ 130.
_c._ Masculine caesura with feminine line-ending:
_Moult fut biaus li vregiers | et gente la praële._ 1.
_Þine blísse ne méi | nówiht únderstónden._ 31.
_d_. Feminine (epic) caesura with feminine line-ending:
_Moult souëf i flairoient | radise et canele._ 2.
_Vor ál is gódes ríche | an únder þíne hónden._ 32.
Alexandrines of this sort, particularly of the last type, are found in a group of poems of the close of the twelfth, or beginning of the thirteenth century, intermingled with Septenaries, and also, though more seldom, combined with four-beat alliterative rhyming long lines and with four-foot verses. Such poems are _On god Ureison of ure Lefdi_ (quoted above), _A lutel soth sermon_ (_Old English Miscellany_, ed. R. Morris, pp. 186 ff.), and _A Bestiary_ (ib. pp. 1-25).