Articles and Commentaries by Aden Lee, Skylark Press Studio Shelley's Skylark | Page 5

these elements to accentuate the sonic qualities of the
skylark’s song.
The first notable aspect of this poem’s form is its use of
cinquains, or five-line stanzas. In rhymed poetry, it is
more common to find stanzas with even numbers of lines
instead of odd numbers, as even numbers allow poets to
achieve a symmetrical distribution of rhyming sounds
within a stanza.
Take for example the following quatrain, or four-line
stanza, from Alfred, Lord Tennyson:
From In Memoriam, VII

Rhyme Scheme

Dark house, by which once more I stand

A

Here in the long unlovely street,

B

Doors, where my heart was used to beat

B

So quickly, waiting for a hand,

A

The rhyme scheme in Tennyson’s quatrain is symmetrically
balanced between two different rhyming sounds. I will
mark “stand” with A, signifying the first rhyming sound.
The next rhyming word is “street” which I will mark with
B, signifying the second rhyming sound. The third
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