Sextilla Poetry Form

I’m back to both a syllable count and a rhyme scheme, but at least the stanza itself is short. There wasn’t as much information about this form as I would have liked, but there was more than the one line I had in my forms list. And in searching for more information, I stumbled across several more obscure forms to add to my list.

The Sextilla first appeared around the 14th century in Spain and Portugal. It’s a six-line stanza, with eight syllables per line. You can have as many or as few stanzas as you wish, but they should be in one of the two following rhyme schemes: aabccb or ababcc.

Schematic:

xxxxxxxa
xxxxxxxa
xxxxxxxb
xxxxxxxc
xxxxxxxc
xxxxxxxb

xxxxxxxa
xxxxxxxb
xxxxxxxa
xxxxxxxb
xxxxxxxc
xxxxxxxc

I gotta admit, I really like working in eight syllable lines. They just seem to have a nice flow to them. I used the first rhyme scheme for the first verse, and the second for the remaining two.


The Battle

My heart beats with a quiet drum,
the dark night of the soul has come.
An eon since, the curse was cast –
another age, another life,
another hand to wield the knife
to fight the evil spirits massed.

The battle is as old as time.
The gods decreed that it be so
when wickedness was on the climb;
benevolence no longer flowed.
The balance must be kept you see,
The task has fallen, now, to me.

I stand between the life and death
of mankind in his many realms,
and battle with my very breath
evil seeking to overwhelm.
The battle, it is glorious
and I remain victorious.