A Spenserian stanza is a nine-line stanza form associated with Edmund Spenser. It uses the rhyme scheme ababbcbcc: the first eight lines are usually in iambic pentameter, and the final line is longer, traditionally iambic hexameter, which gives the stanza a sense of resolution and closure.
Spenser used this form in The Faerie Queene, and later poets such as John Keats adopted it for narrative and descriptive verse.
Example
The lantern trembled on the stair at night,
The rain drew silver lines along the glass;
The empty garden shone with pale moonlight,
And every shadow seemed to breathe and pass.
A distant door gave out a haunted mass,
Then silence folded over roof and stone;
The broken branches tapped like dry, thin brass,
While one bright star kept watch above the lawn.
At last the wind went soft, and all was gone.
Related Definitions
[n] a stanza with eight lines of iambic pentameter and a concluding Alexandrine with the rhyme pattern abab bcbc c; "the spenserian stanza was introduced by Edmund Spenser in The Faerie Queene"