Ballad stanza

{{More references|date=December 2009}}

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.{{cite web |title=Definition of Ballad Stanza |url=https://www.dictionary.com/browse/ballad-stanza |website=Dictionary |access-date=2 December 2020}}{{cite web |title=Ballad Stanza |url=https://www.britannica.com/art/ballad-stanza |website=Britannica |access-date=2 December 2020}}{{cite web |title=Ballad |url=https://www.litcharts.com/literary-devices-and-terms/ballad |website=Litcharts |publisher=the creators of SparkNotes |access-date=2 December 2020}} Assonance in place of rhyme is common.{{Citation needed|date=December 2020}} 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{{Cite web |title=Words to the poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge |url=https://www.oatridge.co.uk/poems/s/samuel-taylor-coleridge-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner.php |access-date=2022-07-05 |website=www.oatridge.co.uk}}, 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,{{Cite web |title=Words to the poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge |url=https://www.oatridge.co.uk/poems/s/samuel-taylor-coleridge-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner.php |access-date=2022-07-05 |website=www.oatridge.co.uk}} lines 75 – 78

:::