The Ballad of the White Horse is also considered a Roman Catholic allegory. Chesterton incorporates a significant amount of philosophy into the basic structure of the story. The poem consists of 2,684 lines of English verse. They are divided into stanzas, typically consisting of 4 to 6 lines each. The poem is based on the ballad stanza form, although the poem often departs significantly from it. Types of metrical feet are used more or less freely, although there is often basic repetition in a line. The rhyme scheme varies, often being ABCB or ABCCCB. Prefatory Note Chesterton begins his work with a note (in prose) declaring
Verse (poetry) is too pedestrian or too incompetent to be classed as poetry. Blank verse is poetry written in regular, metrical, but unrhymed, lines, almost always composed of iambic pentameters. <poem> </poem> Free verse is usually defined as having no fixed meter and no end rhyme. Although free verse may include end rhyme, it commonly does not. <poem> </poem> Verse (poetry) In the countable sense, a verse is formally a single metrical line in a poetic composition. However, verse has come to represent any division or grouping of words in a poetic composition, with groupings traditionally having been referred to as stanzas.