Edmund William Gosse

“ It is impossible, however, to break off here, since there is no rhyme to forte, which has to be supplied twice in the succeeding terzina, where, however, a fresh rhyme, trovai, is introduced, linking the whole to a still further terzina, and so on, indefinitely. The only way in which a poem in terza rima can be closed is by abandoning a rhyme, as at the end of Canto 1 of the Inferno, where no third rhyme is supplied to Pietro and dietro. Boccaccio wrote terza rima in close following of Dante, but it has not been a form very frequently adopted by Italian poets. ”

“ The serventese incatenato of the latter was an arrangement of triple rhymes, and unquestionably appears to have a relation with terza rima; this connexion becomes almost a certainty when we consider the admiration expressed by the Tuscan poets of the 13th century for the metrical inventions of their forerunners, the Provençals. ”