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Overview
Burns stanza
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A six-line stanza rhyming aaabab, the first three lines and the fifth having four stresses, and the fourth and sixth having two stresses. Although it was used much earlier in medieval English romances and Provençal poetry, it is named after the Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759–96), who used it frequently, as in ‘A Poet's Welcome to his love-begotten Daughter’:Welcome! My bonie, sweet, wee dochter!Though ye come here a wee unsought for;And though your comin I hae fought for, Baith Kirk and Queir;Yet by my faith, ye're no unwrought for, That I shall swear!
