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Which form did Thomas Hardy use for his poetry: blank verse, standard forms, regular rhythm and rhyme, or Petrarchan sonnet?

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Thomas Hardy used various poetic forms in his work, rather than adhering strictly to one. His poems often feature different rhyme schemes and meters. For instance, "Beeny Cliff" uses triplets with a consistent rhyme within each stanza, while "The Man He Killed" employs alternating quatrains. Hardy's poetry does not follow a single form like blank verse or the Petrarchan sonnet, showcasing his versatility in rhythm and rhyme.

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A blank verse poem is a poem written in iambic pentameter and does not rhyme. An iamb is a group of words, or one word, which consists of one unstressed and one stressed foot. Pentameter simply means five. Therefore, an iambic pentameter is five sets of stressed/unstressed words/phrases in a line of poetry.

A standard form, in poetry, is an author's commitment to follow any specific poetic form.

Regular rhythm and rhyme describes an author's intent to keep the meter and rhyme of the poem specific to the form they choose to write in.

A Petrarchan sonnet is also known as an Italian Sonnet. The form of this sonnet is as follows:

The poem consists of 14 lines broken into two stanzas. The first line consists of eight lines and is called an octave.The rhyme scheme is a,b,b,a,a,b,b,a.The second stanza consists of six lines and it is called sestet. The...

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rhyme scheme of this stanza can follow any of the following patterns:

c d c d c d
c d d c d c
c d e c d e
c d e c e d
c d c e d c

All of Thomas Hardy's poetry did not adhere to one specific form. One can read many of his poems and notice that they do not follow all of the same rhymes or meters.

For example, the poem "Beeny Cliff", the poem consists of five stanzas which include three lines in each stanza. Each stanza has a rhyme scheme which solidifies it to the stanza while separating it from the others. The rhyme scheme of the poem is as follows:

a,a,a b,b,b c,c,c d,d,d e,e,e

This poem is a simple poem which contains alternating rhyme and is written in triplets- three lines which rhyme.

Another poem, "The Man He Killed", also contains five stanzas, but uses four lines in each stanza. The rhyme scheme is that of a,b,a,b c,d,c,d. This makes the poem an alternating quatrain- four lines of alternating rhyme.

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