terza rima, Italian verse form consisting of stanzas of three lines (tercets); the first and third lines rhyming with one another and the second rhyming with the first and third of the followingtercet. The series ends with a line that rhymes with the second line of the laststanza, so that therhyme scheme isaba, bcb, cdc, . . .,yzy, z. Themetre is ofteniambic pentameter.

Dante, in hisDivine Comedy (writtenc. 1310–14), was the first to use terzarima for a long poem, though a similar form had been previously used by the troubadours. After Dante, terza rima was favoured in 14th-century Italy, especially for allegorical anddidacticpoetry, byPetrarch and Boccaccio, and in the 16th century for satire and burlesque, notably by Ariosto. A demanding form, terza rima has not been widely adopted in languages less rich in rhymes than Italian. It was introduced in England bySir Thomas Wyatt in the 16th century. Many 19th-centuryRomantic poets such as Shelley (“Ode to the West Wind”), Byron, Elizabeth andRobert Browning, and Longfellow experimented with it. In the 20th century, W.H. Auden used terza rima forThe Sea and the Mirror, andArchibald MacLeish in “Conquistador,” but with many deviations from the strict form.