Ballade

Poem with three seven-, eight-, or ten-line stanzas and refrain. Respectively, these have the rhyme schemes and envoys ababbcC bcbC (cf. Chaucer's "Ballade of Good Counsel"), ababbcbC bcbC (Dorothy Parker's "Ballade at Thirty-five"), and ababbccdcD ccdccD (cf. Swinburne's "A Ballad of François Villon"). The refrains appear at the end of each stanza and of the concluding envoy. Other examples are Chaucer's "To Rosemounde" (which lacks an envoy), Dante Gabriel Rossetti's "Ballad of Dead Ladies," Algernon Charles Swinburne's A Ballad of Burdens," William Ernest Henley's "Ballade of Dead Actors," and Austin Dobson's seven-line-stanza "Ballad of Imitation."