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ballad stanza
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Illustration of "The Lamb" from "Songs of Innocence" by William Blake, 1879. poem; poetry
A Study of Poetry
4:043 Dickinson, Emily: A Life of Letters, This is my letter to the world/That never wrote to me; I'll tell you how the Sun Rose/A Ribbon at a time; Hope is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul
Famous Poets and Poetic Form
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) only confirmed photograph of Emily Dickinson. 1978 scan of a Daguerreotype. ca. 1847; in the Amherst College Archives. American poet. See Notes:
Poetry: First Lines
Quick Facts
Key People:
Theodor Fontane
Related Topics:
ballad
quatrain
common particular metre
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ballad stanza

literature
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History

ballad stanza, a verse stanza common in English ballads that consists of two lines in ballad metre, usually printed as a four-line stanza with a rhyme scheme of abcb, as in The Wife of Usher’s Well, which begins:

There lived a wife at Usher’s Well,
And a wealthy wife was she;
She had three stout and stalwart sons,
And sent them o’er the sea.


They hadna been a week from her,
A week but barely ane,
Whan word came to the carlin wife,
That her three sons were gane.