Ballads

Ballads - narrative poem, intended to be sung and without a known author - they usually insist on the doom that haunts our loves and lives

What they include - four line stanzas in which the second and fourth lines rhyme - repeated key phrases or a regularly repeated section, called a refrain - dialogue - The rhyme scheme is typically abab or abcb. - Often uses *colloquialisms in the story telling

- words such as "gonna", phrases such as "ain't nothin", or sometimes even an entire aphorims like "//I think therefore I am."//—Rene Descartes
 * expression not used in formal speech or writing.