Blank verse-not to be confused with free verse consists of successive lines of unrhymed iambic pentametcr. It is the verse of Paradise Lost and has been widely used in dramatic literature, most notably in the plays of Shakespeare. The following portion of a speech by Satan in Paradise Lost will serve as an example:

Several fairly intricate forms of French lyric poetry were introduced into English in the Middle Ages and have been used by poets over the centuries, the later part of the nineteenth showing, perhaps, the greatest modern productivity in them. First is the ballade (not to be confused with the ballad); it normally has three stanzas of eight lines and a concluding stanza or "message" called an envoy of four lines usually addressed to a "prince" or patron. The rhyme scheme is ababbcbc with the envoy rhyming bcbc; all of the stanzas have the same rhyme sounds in corresponding lines but no rhyme word may be repeated. The last line of the first stanza becomes a refrain with which each of the other stanzas ends. An amusing use of the form is in Andrew Lang's Double Ballade of Primitive Man; in the envoy, Max, instead of the "prince" or patron, is Professor Max Miiller, a theorist about primitive sun-god myths, who was perhaps the poet's greatest antagonist:

He lived upon oysters and foes,
But his list of forbidden degrees

An extensive morality shows; 5

Geological evidence goes
To prove he had never a pan,

But he shaved with a shell when he chose,
'Twas the manner of Primitive Man!

He worshipped the rain and the breeze,

He worshipped the river that flows, 10
And the Dawn, and the Moon, and the trees,

And bogies, and serpents and crows;

He buried his dead with their toes
Tucked up, an original plan,

Till their knees came right under their nose, 15
'Twas the manner of Primitive Man!

His communal wives, at his ease,

He would curb with occasional blows;
Or his state bad a queen, like the bees

(As another philosopher trows): 20

When he spoke it was never in prose,
But he sang in a strain that would scan,

For (to doubt it, perchance, were morose)
'Twas the manner of Primitive Man!

Envoy
Max, proudly your Aryans poses 25
But their rigs they undoubtedly ran,
For as every Darwinian knows,
'Twas the manner of Primitive Man!

A second French form is the rondeau, of which there are two versions. One, sometimes called the rondel, has fourteen lines but only two rhymes. The first two lines become a refrain in the seventh and eigbth and thirteenth and fourteenth lines. A frequent arrangement of rhymes is abba abab abbaab, the underscored rhymes being the refrain. Occasionally, the last line is omitted. The second version, called the rondeau, has thirteen lines but again only two rhymes. The first part of the first line becomes a refrain repeated without rhyme after the eighth line and at the end of the poem. The usual rhyme scheme is aabbaaab (refrain) aabba (refrain). Austin Dobson's In After Days is a well known example of a rondeau:

I shall not see the morning sky;
I shall not hear the nigbt-wind sigh;
I shall be mute, as all men must
In after days!

But yet, now living, fain were I 10
That some one then should testify,
Saying - He held his pen in trust
To Art, not serving shame or lust. Will none? - Then let my memory die
In after days! 15

Another even more intricate French form is the villanelle. Five stanzas of three lines and a sixth stanza of four lines make up its nineteen lines. Lines 1 and 3 become a refrain, line 1 being repeated in lines 6, 12, and 18 and line 3 in lines 9, 15, and 19. The tercets rhyme aba and the quatrain abaa; there are only two rhymes throughout. William Ernest Henley's Villanelle is a good example:

A doublc-clappered silver bell>br> That must be made to clink in chime, 5
A dainty thing's the Villanelle;

And if you wish to flute a spell,
Or ask a meeting 'neath the lime,
It serves its purpose passing well.

You must not ask of it the swell 10
Of organs grandiose and sublime-
A dainty thing's the Villanelle;

And, filled with sweetness, as a shell
Is filled with sound, and launched in time,
It serves its purpose passing well. 15

Still fair to see and good to smell
As in the quaintness of its prime,
A dainty tbing's the Villanelle,
It serves its purPOS e passing well.

A variant form of the rondeau is the triolet, consisting of eight lines with but two rhymes, lines 1 and 2 reappearing as lines 7 and 8, and line 1 again as line 4. The rhyme is abaaabab, the underscored rhymes indicating the refrain. A Kiss by Austin Dobson is an example:

Finally, the sestina (introduced from Provengal through Italy to England), the virelai, and the pantoum-all complex forms have not been much used in English and hence are not described in detail here.