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
Anisometric verse Anisometric verse Anisometric verse, known also as heterometric stanza, is a type of poetry where the stanza is made up of lines having unequal metrical length. The number of syllables within the individual lines do not correspond, nor do the number of feet. In poetry, a foot is a group of syllables where one of the syllables is accented or stressed more than the others. Traditionally, poetry uses isometric stanza, each line having the same number of syllables and the same number of feet. Before the 20th century, anisometric verse was rarely seen. Two exceptions are William Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations