Ballad stanza



In poetry, a Ballad stanza is the four-line stanza, known as a quatrain, most often found in the folk ballad. This form consists of alternating four- and three-stress lines. Usually only the second and fourth lines rhyme (in an a/b/c/b pattern). Assonance in place of rhyme is common. Samuel Taylor Coleridge adopted the ballad stanza in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, alternating eight and six syllable lines.
 * All in a hot and copper sky!
 * The bloody Sun, at noon,
 * Right up above the mast did stand,
 * No bigger than the Moon.
 * Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, lines 111 – 114

The longer first and third lines are rarely rhymed, although at times poets may use internal rhyme in these lines.


 * In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,
 * It perched for vespers nine;
 * Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,
 * Glimmered the white Moon-shine.
 * Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, lines 75 – 78

Chevy-Chase-Strophe