Rhyming pattern Lines and Stanzas

 Rhyming pattern

Lines and Stanzas

 Poetry is often separated into lines on the page. These lines may be based on the number of metrical feet or may emphasize a rhyming pattern at the ends of lines. Lines may serve other functions, particularly where the poem is not written in a formal metrical pattern. Lines can separate, compare or contrast thoughts expressed in different units or can highlight a change in tone.

Lines of the poem are often organized stanzas, which are denominated by the number of lines included. Thus a collection of two lines is a couplet, three lines a triplet, four lines a quatrain, five lines a quintain, six-line a sestet, and eight lines an octet. 

These lines may or may not relate to each other by rhyme or rhyme. For example, a couplet maybe two lines with identical meters which rhyme or two lines held together by a common meter alone. Stanzas often have related couplets or triplets within them.

In many forms of poetry, stanzas are interlocking so that the rhyming scheme or other structural elements of stanza determine those of succeeding stanzas. Examples of each interlocking stanzas include, for example, the Ghazal and the villanelle, where a refrain is established in the first stanza which then repeats in subsequent stanzas. 

Related to the use of interlocking stanzas is their use to separate thematic part of a poem. For example, the strophe antistrophe and epode of the ode form are often separated into one or more stanzas. In such a case, or where a structure is meant to be highly formal; a stanza will usually form a complete thought, consisting of full sentences and cohesive thoughts.