Poetic Form
Triolet
From French: a little three. A medieval French fixed form; English examples from Hardy and Bridges show its capacity for irony and yearning within tight formal constraint.
Definition
An eight-line poem with only two rhymes and two refrains, rhyming ABaAabAB (capitals = repeated lines).
Example
Thomas Hardy wrote triolets: 'How great my grief, my joys how few, / Since first it was my fate to know thee.'