Tail rhyme is a family of stanzaic verse forms used in poetry in French and especially English during and since the Middle Ages, and probably derived from models in medieval Latin versification. Michael Drayton's "Ballad of Agincourt", first published in 1605, offers a simple English example, rhymed AAABCCCB; the shorter (dimeter) B-lines form the 'tail' lines and appear at regular intervals among the longer (trimeter) lines: Fair stood the wind for France, When we our sails advance, Nor now to prove our chance, Longer will tarry; But putting to the main, At Caux, the mouth of Seine, With all his martial train, Landed King Harry. (lines 1–8) However, tail rhyme stanzas can take many forms, potentially containing either more or fewer lines than this example. Tail rhyme is a principle of construction, not one set pattern; the "Burns stanza" is an example of a specific pattern which forms a sub-type of tail rhyme. Form A tail rhyme stanza is united by intermittent lines which all rhyme with each other but do not rhyme with their immediately adjacent lines. Most commonly, as in the example from Drayton above, but not universally, the uniting tail lines are metrically shorter than the surrounding lines, and are the lines carrying the second rhyme heard in the stanza, the B-rhyme. The shortest possible tail rhyme stanza consists of six lines: two rhyming couplets, each followed by a tail line, AABCCB or AABAAB. AABAAB tail rhyme is the form of Paul Laurence Dunbar's "The Conquerors": Round the wide earth, from the red field your valor has won, Blown with the breath of the far-speaking gun, Goes the word. Bravely you spoke through battle cloud heavy and dun. Tossed though the speech toward the mist-hidden sun, The world heard. (lines 1–6) A "tail rhyme quatrain" (ABAB) is not normally considered tail rhyme in English prosody, but rather a sub-type of common metre. Tail rhyme need not employ couplets, as in the above example from Dunbar, or three-line blocks, as in the example from Drayton. Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem "The Lady of Shalott" uses an AAAABCCCB structure, with the second tail line repeated throughout as a refrain: Willows whiten, aspens shiver. The sunbeam showers break and quiver In the stream that runneth ever By the island in the river Flowing down to Camelot. Four gray walls, and four gray towers Overlook a space of flowers, And the silent