kept throughout.

Blank Verse.--Verses which lack both consonantal rhyme and assonance
occur in Spanish, and are called _versos sueltos_ (or _libres_).
Compositions in blank verse are, however, extremely difficult to write
in Spanish, and are therefore comparatively rare.


STROPHES

The strophe is frequently of arbitrary length, yet when the poet has
once fixed the measure of his strophe he is supposed to preserve the
same measure throughout. The following are some of the strophic
arrangements in Spanish.

_Pareados_ are pairs of contiguous verses of the same number of
syllables, which rhyme[1] together in pairs.

[Footnote 1: By _rhyme_ hereafter shall be understood _consonantal_
rhyme, unless otherwise indicated.]

_Tercetos_ are a series of strophes, in the first of which the first
verse rhymes with the third, and, from the second strophe on, the
first and third verse of each successive strophe rhyme with the middle
verse of the preceding strophe. This form of verse is known in Italian
as _terza rima_. The composition ends with a _serventesio_ (see
below), of which the first and third verses rhyme with the middle
verse of the preceding strophe. The rhyme-scheme, then, would be a b
a, b c b, c d c, etc., d e d e.