 Is a continuous run of lines of the same length

and the same metre. Most narrative verse is written in

such continuous lines. Lyric poetry, because it is closer
to song, usually uses stanzas.
As wreath of snow, on mountain-breast
Slides from the rock that gave it rest,
Poor Ellen glided from her stay,
And at the Monarch’s feet she lay:
No word her choking voice commands;
She show’d the ring, she clasp’d her hands.
O! not a moment could he brook,
The generous prince, that suppliant look!
Gently he raised her; and, the while,
Check’d with a glance the circle’s smile;
Graceful but grave, her brow he kiss’d,
And bade her terrors be dismiss’d:
‘Yes, fair, the wandering poor Fitz-James
The fealty of Scotland claims.
T o him thy woes, thy wishes bring;
He will redeem his signet ring.
(From: Scott, The Lady of the Lake, Canto VI)
 Is a non-rhyming iambic pentameter, usually
stichic. Under the influence of Shakespeare it became
a widely used verse form for English dramatic verse,
but it is also used, under the influence of Milton, for
non-dramatic verse.
And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again;
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope
[...]
(From: Wordsworth, Lines Written a Few Miles above
Tintern Abbey)
 Is the name for two rhyming lines of verse following immediately
after each other. The heroic couplet, popular in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries consists of two lines of rhyming iambic
pentameter. An octosyllabic couplet is also sometimes called a short
couplet. The regular metre and the rhyme pattern of the couplet,
usually with end-stopped lines, provides comparatively small units
(two lines in fact) in which to make a point. Especially eighteenth-
century poets used the form to create satirical contrasts within the
couplet. In the following example from Pope’s Imitations of Horace
especially the lines “To prove, that Luxury could never hold; / And
place, on good security, his Gold” present a blatant contradiction
between words and action in a completely harmonious (regular metre,
noticeable rhyme) poetic form. In consequence the reader notices the
contradiction somewhat belatedly, almost as an afterthought. The
effect is that of thinly disguised satire.
Time was, a sober Englishman wou’d knock
His servants up, and rise by five a clock,
Instruct his Family in ev’ry rule,
And send his Wife to Church, his Son to school.
To worship like his Fathers was his care;
To teach their frugal Virtues to his Heir;
To prove, that Luxury could never hold;
And place, on good Security, his Gold.
(From: Pope, Imitations of Horace, Ep. II.i)
 A tercet, sometimes also called a triplet, is a
stanza with three lines of the same rhyme (aaa or two
rhyming lines embracing a line without rhyme (axa).
Released from the noise of the butcher and baker,
Who, my old friends be thanked, did seldom forsake her,
And from the soft duns of my landlord the Quaker;
From chiding the footmen, and watching the lasses,
From Nell that burned milk too, and Tom that broke glasses
(Sad mischiefs through which a good housekeeper passes!);
From some real care, but more fancied vexation,
From a life parti-coloured, half reason, half passion,
Here lies after all the best wench in the nation.
(From: Prior, Jinny the Just)
 The terza rima is a variant of the tercet famously
used by Dante in his Divine Comedy. The terza rima
uses a chain rhyme, the second line of each stanza
rhymes with the first and the third line of the next
stanza (aba bcb cdc etc.)
The snow came down last night like moths
Burned on the moon; it fell till dawn,
Covered the town with simple cloths.
Absolute snow lies rumpled on
What shellbursts scattered and deranged,
Entangled railings, crevassed lawn.
As if it did not know they’d changed,
Snow smoothly clasps the roofs of homes
Fear-gutted, trustless and estranged
(From: Wilbur, First Snow in Alsace)
 The quatrain is one of the most common and
popular stanza forms in English poetry. It is a stanza
comprising four lines of verse with various rhyme
patterns. When written in iambic pentameter and
rhyming abab it is called heroic quatrain:
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
(From: Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard)
 used a quatrain rhyming abba for his famous
poem In Memoriam A.H.H.and the stanza form has
since derived its name from this poem –
the Memoriam stanza:
O, yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;
 The ballad stanza is a variant of the quatrain.
Most commonly, lines of iambic tetrameter alternate
with iambic trimeter (also called chevy-chase
stanza after one of the oldest poems written in this
form). The rhyme scheme is usually abcb, sometimes
also abab.
Down dropped the breeze, the sails dropped down,
‘Twas sad as sad could be;
And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea!
All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon.
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
(From: Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner)
 The rhyme royal is a seven-line stanza in iambic
pentameter which rhymes ababbcc. It is called rhyme
royal because King James I of Scotland used it, though
he was not the first to do so; Chaucer employed the
stanza in Troilus and Criseydemuch earlier.
A plain without a feature, bare and brown,
No blade of grass, no sign of neighbourhood,
Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,
Yet congregated on its blankness, stood
An unintelligible multitude,
A million eyes, a million boots in line
Without expression, waiting for a sign.
(From: Auden, The Shield of Achilles)
 The ottava rima derives from Italian models like
the terza rima and the sonnet do; it is a stanza with
eight lines rhyming abababcc. The most famous use of
the stanza form in English poetry was made
by Byron in Don Juan, who skillfully employs the
stanza form for comic effect; in the following example
the last line renders the slightly pompous lovesickness
of the first seven lines quite ridiculous.
“And oh! if e’er I should forget, I swear –
But that’s impossible, and cannot be –
Sooner shall this blue ocean melt to air,
Sooner shall earth resolve itself to sea,
Than I resign thine image, Oh, my fair!
Or think of anything, excepting thee;
A mind diseased no remedy can physic” –
(Here the ship gave a lurch, and he grew seasick.)
 The Spenserian stanza, famously used
by Edmund Spenser in The Faerie Queene, has nine
lines rhyming ababbcbcc, the first eight lines are
iambic pentameter, the last line is an alexandrine,
which breaks the slight monotony of the pentameters
and is often employed to emphasise a point. Here is
Spenser’s description of the Redcross Knight; the last
line emphasises the knight’s valour (he feared nothing
but everyone feared him):
But on his brest a bloudie Crosse he bore,
The deare remembrance of his dying Lord,
For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore,
And dead as living ever him ador’d:
Upon his shield the like was also scor’d,
For soveraine hope, which in his helpe he had:
Right faithfull true he was in deede and word,
But of his cheere did seeme too solemne sad;
Yet nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad.
(From: Spenser, The Faerie Queene)
 The sonnet is a lyric poem of (usually) fourteen
lines in iambic pentameter which became popular in
England in the sixteenth century (see Types of Poetry).
Later sonnet writers sometimes varied the number of
lines between ten and sixteen lines, but still called the
poem a sonnet (George Meredith for instance in
his sonnet sequence Modern Love used sixteen
lines, Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote sonnets that had
ten-and-a-half lines).