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A tercet is composed of three lines of poetry, forming a stanza or a complete poem.William Baer, Writing metrical poetry: contemporary lessons for mastering traditional forms, 2006, "Chapet 9: The Tercet" pp 128ff.
Other types of tercet include an enclosed tercet where the lines rhyme in an pattern and terza rima where the pattern of a verse is continued in the next verse by making the outer lines of the next stanza rhyme with the central line of the preceding stanza, , 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".Croce, (M.E. Moss, tr.) Essays on Literature and Literary Criticism, 1990, "Dante's poetry", p 290. 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".Baer 2006, p. 130.
The tercet also forms part of the villanelle, where the initial five stanzas are tercets, followed by a concluding quatrain.Mary Frances Claggett (2026). 9780814152508, National Council of Teachers of English. . ISBN 9780814152508
A tercet may also form the separate halves of the ending sestet in a Petrarchan sonnet, where the rhyme scheme is , as in Longfellow's "Cross of Snow". For example, while "Cross of Snow" is indeed a Petrarchan sonnet, it does not follow the form of. Instead, its form is . A tercet also ends where the keywords of the lines before are repeated in a highly ordered form.
The tercet was introduced into English poetry by Sir Thomas Wyatt in the 16th century. It was employed by Shelley and is the form used in Byron's The Prophecy of Dante.Noted in Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia, 1948, s.v. "tercet", "terza rima"
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