In poetry, a ballad stanza is a type of four-line stanza called a quatrain, commonly found in folk ballads. This stanza has four lines. The first and third lines follow a rhythm with four beats, while the second and fourth lines follow a rhythm with three beats. The rhyme pattern is usually ABCB, meaning the first and third lines do not rhyme, but the second and fourth lines do. Sometimes, vowel sounds are used instead of rhyming words. The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge used the ballad stanza in his poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The longer first and third lines are often not rhymed, though poets may sometimes use rhyming within these lines.