A six-line stanza in iambic pentameter with the rhyme scheme ababcc. It is named for Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, the poem that helped make the form familiar. The closing couplet gives the stanza a neat finish after the alternation of the first four lines.
Example
The moon slid low behind the orchard wall,
The apple branches stirred with silver light;
A fox kept watch beside the garden wall,
Then vanished softly into fields of night;
One last bell rang, and all the lanes grew still,
As dawn waited beyond the eastern hill.