Home › Glossary › Letter B

Ballad stanza

Form
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A quatrain with alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, usually rhyming abcb

Detailed Definition
A Ballad stanza is a quatrain employing ballad meter (alternating iambic tetrameter and trimeter lines) with a rhyme scheme usually limited to the second and fourth lines (ABCB); this economical structure facilitates oral transmission and musical setting, emphasizing narrative drive over descriptive detail, and often features incremental repetition, dialogue, and abrupt shifts to heighten dramatic tension in folk and literary ballads alike.
Example
Example in poetry:
“O mother, mother, make my bed. / O make it soft and narrow.” – traditional ballad stanza (ABCB, iambic tetrameter/trimeter); Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”: “The ice was here, the ice was there” – classic ballad stanza; Bob Dylan’s “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” uses ballad stanza for protest; Keats’s “La Belle Dame sans Merci”: “O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms?” – romantic ballad adaptation; Contemporary example: “She walked the shore at break of day / And never came back home.”
Additional Notes
Standard ballad form: quatrain with alternating four-stress and three-stress lines. Also called ballad quatrain or common measure. Traditional narrative vehicle. Related to hymnal stanza. Study traditional ballads for rhythm and rhyme patterns.
Also Known As
ballad measure ballad quatrain folk quatrain hymn stanza Ballad metre
Skip to main content