Terza Rima

Terza Rima is a rhyme scheme -- as opposed to a strict form -- which involves interlocking rhymes, written in iambic tercets (three-line stanzas). The rhyme scheme is aba bcb cdc ded (and so forth) for as long as you want to continue. Although no specific line length is required, most terza rima poems in English are written in iambic pentameter. If other line lengths are used, such as tetrameter, all lines must be in that length.

Most terza rimas end with a rhyming couplet, like a sonnet.

For example:

The letters heaved from dark primordial stew
To rest exhausted on unwritten sand
Unwitting in their gasping curlicue

His gaze was caught, and with his blackened hand
Commanded them to form phonetic tunes
A runic echo through a songless land

Though doves may cry and lovers sing to moons
The crooning melts in bland and soulless mass
To asinine receivers it communes

But master craftsmen see through coloured glass
And pass through ages gone and yet to be
An energy and vision none surpass

You spend your years pretending poetry
Yet he has taken words and set them free