TERZA RIMA, or "third rhyme," a form of verse developed by the Italian poets of the 13th century. Its origin has been at tributed by some to the three-lined ritournel, which was an early Italian form of popular poetry, and by others to the Provencals serventese incatenato, an arrangement of triple rhymes, which unquestionably appears to have a relation with terza rima ; Dante gave to terza rima its artistic character. What this character is may best be seen by an examination of the lines with which the Inferno opens : Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, Che la diritta via era smarrita. Ah quanto a dir qual 'era e cosa dura Questa selva selvaggia ed aspra e forte, Che nel pensier rinnova la paura! It is impossible, however, to break off here, since there is no rhyme to forte, which has to be supplied twice in the succeeding terzina, where, however, a fresh rhyme, trovai, is introduced, linking the whole to a still further terzina, and so on, indefinitely in the sequence aba, bcb, cdc, ded . . . Boccaccio wrote terza
rima in close following of Dante, but it has not been a form very frequently adopted by Italian poets. The difficulty of sustaining dignity and force in these complicated chains of verse has usually deterred writers in other languages from adventuring on terza rima. In the age of Elizabeth, Samuel Daniel employed it in his "Epistle to the Countess of Bedford," but he found no followers. Shelley tried it in two poems (Prince Athanase and The Triumph of Life), Byron in one (The Prophecy of Dante), but probably the most successfully sustained poem in terza rima in the Eng lish language is Mrs. Browning's Casa Guidi Windows (1851).