Terza rima

The terza rima (Italian terza rima ) is an Italian-born poem form. It was invented by Dante Alighieri and forms the Versschema the "Divine Comedy ".

Triplets consist of three lines of verse that are coupled in chain rhyme scheme aba bcb - cdc - ded. In the Italian poetry a line usually has eleven syllables ( hendecasyllable ), in German and English iambic pentameter dominated the zehnsilbige.

After Dante Petrarch and Boccaccio, among other compacted in terza rima. In English poetry, the use of terza rima was a difficult task, since English is not unlike Italian inflected language, and thus the number of possible rhyming words is not equal smaller. Chaucer they still led in the 14th century English poetry a ( Complaint to His Lady). Later wrote, among other things John Milton, Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, in the 20th century, among others, William Carlos Williams and TS Eliot in this form. Hugo von Hofmannsthal's terza rima poem about transience used the usual chain for terza rima rhyme scheme until after the second verse and closes with a single line that rhymes with the one before going. ( aba cbc dcd - ede -e)

Examples

The first few lines from Dante's Divine Comedy:

From Shelley's Ode to the West Wind:

From Goethe In serious ossuary was it: