The end of the line may, in any order, have either a masculine rhyme, as in ll. 1-4, 9, 10, or a feminine rhyme, as in ll. 7 and 8. There occur besides, but seldom, trisyllabic rhymes, such as those in ll. 5-6, or _súnegen: múnegen_ 141-2.
§ =128.= This metre continued to be very popular in Middle and Modern English poetry, and is still extensively used. As a rule its structure constantly remained the same; nevertheless we may, in both periods, distinguish between two well-marked ways of treating it. It was, for instance, at the end of the thirteenth and in the first half of the fourteenth century, very freely handled in the North of England in the _Surtees Psalter_, further by Robert Mannyng in his _Handlyng Sinne_, and by Richard Rolle de Hampole in his _Pricke of Conscience_. Their treatment of this verse is characterized, for instance, by the remarkably frequent occurrence of two and even three unaccented syllables at the beginning and in the middle of the line, e.g.:
_In þi rightwísenésses biþénke I sál Þine sághes nóght forgéte withál._ Psalm cxviii, v. 16.
_And rékened þe cústome hóuses echóne, At whých þey had góde and at whýche nóne._ Mannyng, Handlyng Sinne, ll. 5585-6.
Other rhythmical licences, such as the omission of unaccented syllables in the middle of a verse, and inversion of accent, are frequent in these compositions. Level stress, on the other hand, for the most part is found only in rhyme, as _sh+e+nsh+é+pe_: _kepe_ Hampole 380-1; _come_: _b+o+ghs+ó+me_ ib. 394-5.
The other extreme of strict regularity in the number of syllables is exhibited in another group of North English and Scottish compositions of the fourteenth century, such as the _Metrical Homilies_, the _Cursor Mundi_, Barbour's _Bruce_, Wyntoun's _Chronykyl_. The metrical licences most frequent here are level stress, suppression of the anacrusis, and the omission of unaccented syllables in the middle of the line, in the _Metrical Homilies_. The rhythm is, however, as a rule, strictly iambic, and the number of syllables eight or nine, according as the rhymes are masculine or feminine.
§ =129.= The contemporaneous literary productions of the Midlands and South written in this metre generally observe a mean between the free and the strict versification of the two northern groups.