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Poetic form

What is a Ballad?

Definition

A narrative poem in song-like quatrains, built to tell a story.

Ballads are story-poems built for the human voice — they were sung for centuries before they were written down. The classic ballad stanza alternates four-beat and three-beat lines, rhyming ABCB: a shape so singable that pop music still uses it.

Ballads love drama: shipwrecks, lost loves, hauntings, heists. The form keeps the camera moving — dialogue, action, repetition as chorus — and trusts the story to carry the feeling.

Structure of a ballad

  • Quatrains (4-line stanzas) rhyming ABCB
  • Alternating 4-beat and 3-beat lines (common meter)
  • Repetition and refrain as a chorus
  • Story-first: characters, action, often dialogue

How to write a ballad

  1. Choose a story with a turn: a journey, a loss, a reveal.
  2. Open in the middle of the action — ballads don't clear their throats.
  3. Use dialogue for the emotional peaks.
  4. Build a refrain line that changes slightly each time it returns.

10 ballad examples

Classic and original ballad poems, free to read in full.

A Red, Red Rose

Robert Burns · 1794

O my Luve is like a red, red roseThat's newly sprung in June;O my Luve is like the melody

16 lines · ballad

Annabel Lee

Edgar Allan Poe · 1849

It was many and many a year ago,In a kingdom by the sea,That a maiden there lived whom you may know

41 lines · ballad

Eldorado

Edgar Allan Poe · 1849

Gaily bedight, A gallant knight,In sunshine and in shadow,

24 lines · ballad

The Raven

Edgar Allan Poe · 1845

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore —While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

113 lines · narrative

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod

Eugene Field · 1889

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one nightSailed off in a wooden shoe, —Sailed on a river of crystal light

48 lines · lyric

Paul Revere's Ride

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · 1860

Listen my children and you shall hearOf the midnight ride of Paul Revere,On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;

130 lines · narrative

The Charge of the Light Brigade

Alfred, Lord Tennyson · 1854

Half a league, half a league,Half a league onward,All in the valley of Death

55 lines · narrative

The Owl and the Pussy-Cat

Edward Lear · 1871

The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to seaIn a beautiful pea-green boat;They took some honey, and plenty of money

23 lines · nonsense

Chapter I

Lewis Carroll · 1871

’Twas brillig, and the slithy tovesDid gyre and gimble in the wade;All mimsy were the borogoves,

28 lines · nonsense

Auld Lang Syne (Wikisource)

Robert Burns · 1788

Should old acquaintance be forgot,and never brought to mind ?Should old acquaintance be forgot,

25 lines · ballad

Common questions

Are ballads always sad?

No — comic and romantic ballads are everywhere — but the form's appetite for drama means tragedy is its favourite meal.