SPENSERIAN STANZA

The Spenserian stanza contains 9 lines, 8 of iambic pentameter, and a final line of iambic hexameter.  The rhyme scheme is a-b-a-b-b-c-b-c-c.  The form was used by Robert Burns, Percy Shelley, John Keats, Lord Byron, and of course, Edmund Spenser in "The Faery Queen."


Here's an example from Thrall and Hibbard's Handbook to Literature:

A Gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine,
Y-cladd in mightie armes and silver shielde,
Wherein all dints of deepe wounds did remaine, 
The cruel marks of many a bloudy fielde;
Yet armes till that time did he never wield:
His angry steede did chide his foming bitt,
As much disdayning to the curbe to yield:
Full jolly knight he seemd, and faire did sitt,
As one for knightly giusts and fierce encounters fitt.

Spenser's Faerie Queen

The Alexandrine at the end is thought to add dignity to the sweep of the form and, at the same time, to provide an opportunity for summary. So the line knits up the thought of the whole stanza.

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