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Ballad stanza

Four-line poetic verse, known as a quatrain

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. 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.

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 ::: ## References ## References 1. ["Definition of Ballad Stanza"](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/ballad-stanza). 2. ["Ballad Stanza"](https://www.britannica.com/art/ballad-stanza). 3. ["Ballad"](https://www.litcharts.com/literary-devices-and-terms/ballad). *the creators of SparkNotes*. 4. ["Words to the poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge"](https://www.oatridge.co.uk/poems/s/samuel-taylor-coleridge-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner.php). 5. ["Words to the poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge"](https://www.oatridge.co.uk/poems/s/samuel-taylor-coleridge-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner.php). ::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballad_stanza) and is available under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the [article history page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballad_stanza?action=history). ::

stanzaic-form ballads

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