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ballad metre

ballad metre or ballad stanza , the usual form of the folk ballad and its literary imitations, consisting of a quatrain in which the first and third lines have four stresses while the second and fourth have three stresses. Usually only the second and fourth lines rhyme. The rhythm is basically iambic , but the number of unstressed syllables in a line may vary, as in this stanza from the traditional ‘Lord Thomas and Fair Annet’:‘O art thou blind, Lord ...

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