Ode to a Nightingale the words that dominate the poem. There is also an emphasis on words beginning with consonants, especially those that begin with "b", "p" or "v". These three consonants are relied on heavily in the first stanza, and they are used syzygically to add a musical tone within the poem. In terms of poetic meter, Keats relies on spondee throughout his 1819 odes and in just over 8% of his lines within "Ode to a Nightingale", including line 12: and line 25: To Walter Jackson Bate, the use of spondees in lines 31–34 creates a feeling of slow flight, and "in
Tercet the outer lines of the next stanza rhyme with the central line of the preceding stanza, BCB, as in the "terza rima" or "terzina" form of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. There has been much investigation of the possible sources of the Dantesque "terzina", which Benedetto Croce characterised as "linked, enclosed, disciplined, vehement and yet calm". William Baer observes of the tercets of terza rima, "These interlocking rhymes tend to pull the listener's attention forward in a continuous flow... Given this natural tendency to glide forward, terza rima is especially well-suited to narration and description". The tercet also forms part of