Poetry Challenge: Introducing the Sestet
A sestet is a poetical form developed by Petrarch, who is more ancient than even me. A sestet is made up of two verses, each six lines long. Sestets may have different rhyming pattern, but have varying rhythms. They can either be free verse (with no rhythmic pattern or set variation of stressed and unstressed syllables, or in iambic pentameter). The two most common rhyming schemes were a/b/c/a/b/c for the first stanza and a/b/c/c/b/a for the second stanza, or a/b/a/b/a/b for both stanzas. One variant rhyming scheme was a/b/a/b/c/c/. Shakespeare was known to use sestets in his work. An example of a sestet is below. The Ice Queen From high up in the mountains tall The ravening ice queen comes Her voice echoing, cracks bone like ice Makes our strongest towers fall Our dead will rise, and our hearts grow numb And beneath her feet we flail, fleeing her like mice. Our heroes are long gone, either dead or flown Our warriors are shattered, their life-bloo...