To notate the rhyme pattern of a form or stanza, including refrain lines, one uses lowercase letters to stand for rhymes, and uppercase to designate entire lines that are repeated. The following triolet would be diagrammed as: ABaAabAB
A Triolet
by A. B. "Banjo" Paterson
Of all the sickly forms of verse,
Commend me to the triolet.
It makes bad writers somewhat worse:
Of all the sickly forms of verse,
That fall beneath a reader's curse,
It is the feeblest jingle yet.
Of all the sickly forms of verse,
Commend me to the triolet.
To add more information about a stanza, subscripts can be used to designate the number of feet per line. In that case, the poem above would be: A4B4a4A4a4b4A4B4
(Normal-sized numbers can also be used: A4B4a4A4a4b4A4B4)
For nonce stanzas without refrains or repeating lines, the system is fairly easy to use. The following is a seven-line nonce stanza, which rhymes aabcccb, with iambic tetrameter in lines 1, 2, 4, 4, and 6, and iambic trimeter in lines 3 and 7:
She
ceas'd-And now in doubtful mood,
All motionless and mute I stood,
Like one by charm opprest:
By turns from each to each I rov'd,
And each by turns again I lov'd;
For ages ne'er could one have prov'd
More lovely than the rest.
--Washington Allston
The notation for this would be: a4a4b3c4c4c4b3
One more example:
rhyme feet
Pity thy unconfined
a 3
Clear spirit, whose enfranchised eyes
b 4
Use not their grosser sense?
c 3
Ah, no! thy bright intelligence
c 4
Hath its own Paradise,
b 3
A realm wherein to hear and see
d 4
Things hidden from our kind.
a 3
Not thou, not thou--'t is we
d 3
Are deaf, are dumb, are blind!
a 3
-- Edmund Clarence Stedman
This would be diagrammed: a3b4c3c4b3d4a3d3a3
Finally, to designate the repetition of part of a line, the capital letter R can be used, signifying rentrement, the French word for this. Using this notation, a rondeau would be diagrammed as: aabba aabR aabbaR