Stanza Pattern

Stanza:
The stanza is a group of lines in a poem separated from other lines and the
group of lines divides a poem having a fixed length, meter or rhyming scheme.
There are many traditional stanza patterns. The following are some common
patterns of stanza:
Couplet

Two-line

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Triplet or

Three-Line

-William Shakespeare, Sonnet 18

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.

Tercet

Oh! Lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

Quatrain

-Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind

Thy voice in on the rolling air

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

Four-Line

I hear thee where the waters run:

Thou standes in the rising sun,
And in the setting art fair.
Sestet

Six-Line

-Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memorium

Behind medips eternity
Before meimmortality
Myselfthe term between
Death but the drift of eastern gray,
Dissolving into dawn away,
Before the west begin
-Emily Dickinson, Behind MeDips Eternity

Rhyme
Royal

Seven-Line

Now stole upon the time the dead of night,

When heavy sleep had closd up mortal eyes;
No comfortable star did lend his light;
No noise but owls and wolves death-boding cries;
Now serves the season that they may surprise
The silly lambs; pure thoughts are dead and still,
While lust and murder wake to stain and kill.
William Shakespeare, Lucrec

Eight-Line

Ottava
Rima

Labor is blossoming or dancing where

The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,
Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
Chestnut tree, great-rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom, or the bole?
O body swayed to music, o brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
-William Butler Yeats, Among School Children
Sonnet

The word Sonnet is derived from the Italian word sonetto and Petrarch is the
pioneer of sonnet. a sonnet has fourteen lines and is written in iambic
pentameter. It has a specific rhyme scheme and a volta or a specific turn.
There are three types of sonnets:
Shakespearean sonnet
Petrarchan sonnet
Spenserian sonnet
Example:
The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;

Little we see in nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. Great god! Id rather be

A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might i, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of proteus rising from the sea;

c
d
c
d
c
d

Octave

Sestet

Or hear old triton blow his wreathd horn.

--William Wordsworth, The World Is Too Much With Us