RHYME AND RHYTHM IN POETRY
A traditional form of the couplet is the tetrameter, or four beat couplet: Milton’s
‘L’ Allegro’ and Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’ are admirable examples of great poetry in the octosyllabic couplet.
A three rhymed pattern is called a triplet or tercet. Below is an example of it from Dryden’s poetry:
Warm’d with more particles of Heav’nly Flame
He wing’d his upward flight, and soar’d to fame:
The rest remained below, a Tribe without a Name.
Three lines with one set of rhyming words can be found also in Tennyson’s ”rile Eagle’. This is, however, not very common in English and is generally used to give variety to a poem in the rhyming couplet. However, the rhymes are so~neti~nes linked from verse to verse and may run as aba – bcb – cdc – ded – and so on. This form of triplet is called terza rima. It is borrowed from Italian and was employed by Dante (1265-1321) in his Divine Comedy. The finest example of it in English is Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” which, however, ends in a couplet.
Quatrains are stanzas of four lines. Above you read about the ballad stanza in which tetrameter and trimeter lines alternate. A variety of rhyme schemes have been observed in quatrains: a b a b ( in which lines rhyme alternately); a b c b ( in which the second and fourth lines only rhyme).
