In poetry, a ballad stanza is a type of a four-line stanza, known as a quatrain, most often found in the folk ballad. The ballad stanza consists of a total of four lines, with the first and third lines written in the iambic tetrameter and the second and fourth lines written in the iambic trimeter with a rhyme scheme of ABCB.[1][2][3] Assonance in place of rhyme is common. Samuel Taylor Coleridge adopted the ballad stanza in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
- 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,
- While the creatures crooned
- Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, lines 75 – 78
A more modern example:
- The Sweeney's doing ninety 'cos
- They've got the word to go.
- They get a gang of villains
- In a shed up at Heathrow.
- Squeeze, Cool For Cats.
References
- ^ "Definition of Ballad Stanza". Dictionary. Retrieved 2 December 2020.
- ^ "Ballad Stanza". Britannica. Retrieved 2 December 2020.
- ^ "Ballad". Litcharts. the creators of SparkNotes. Retrieved 2 December 2020.