Structure
Ballad Stanza
Derived from the common meter of hymnody. Emily Dickinson adapted the ballad stanza for lyric poetry with characteristic slant rhyme.
Definition
A quatrain rhyming ABCB, alternating iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, the standard unit of the folk ballad.
Example
'There lived a wife at Usher's Well, / And a wealthy wife was she; / She had three stout and stalwart sons…'