Sicilian Octave
Quick answer: Sicilian octave guide: the eight-line ABABABAB stanza from medieval Sicily, its strambotto roots, links to the sonnet, and how to write one well.
Two rhyme sounds, eight lines, no escape hatch: the Sicilian octave runs ABABABAB, alternating the same pair of rhymes from first line to last. There is no couplet to close it and no third sound to relieve it, just a pendulum swinging eight times. Done badly it hypnotises; done well it builds an incantatory pressure few short forms can match.
The stanza comes from thirteenth-century Sicily, where the poets of Frederick II's court, the Sicilian School, were busy inventing the future of European lyric. It descends from the strambotto, a one-stanza folk love song, and it shares a birthplace and a family tree with the sonnet itself.
Sicily, the strambotto and the sonnet's cousin
In the early 1200s, notaries and courtiers around Frederick II wrote love lyrics in Sicilian vernacular rather than Latin or Provençal, a decision with enormous consequences for Italian literature. Among their materials was the strambotto, a short sung stanza of hendecasyllables, eleven-syllable lines, often rhymed abababab in its Sicilian variety. When Giacomo da Lentini assembled the first sonnets at that same court, he built the octave, the sonnet's first eight lines, on this alternating pattern; the tighter ABBAABBA arrangement most sonnet readers know came later with continental refinement. So the Sicilian octave is not a sonnet fragment: historically, the sonnet is a Sicilian octave with a sestet attached.
The pattern and its pressures
The rules are brief. Eight lines, rhymed ABABABAB. Italian uses hendecasyllables; English practice substitutes iambic pentameter. There is no required volta, refrain or closing couplet.
Each rhyme sound must supply four line-endings, which is the form's whole difficulty and its whole character. English rhyme families thin out fast, so sound choice is close to fate here. The pendulum structure also shapes rhetoric: with no couplet to conclude, the octave tends toward accumulation, eight waves of the same tide, and the final line must close by force of sense rather than by a change in the rhyme.
Writing one in English
Choose two rhyme sounds with at least six easy partners each; slant rhyme on one or two endings is a legitimate mercy. Then choose a subject that suits obsession: longing, insomnia, tides, prayer, jealousy, anything that returns and returns. The form enacts fixation, so let content and structure agree.
Build intensification rather than argument. A practical scheme: lines one to four establish the situation, lines five to seven press it further or darken it, line eight lands the realisation, using the strongest sentence of the poem since no couplet will bail you out. Writory's judges score structure as well as language, and an octave whose obsessive scheme matches an obsessive subject is the kind of form-content agreement they notice.
Where it excels, where it collapses
The Sicilian octave excels at single-mood lyric: love complaint, invocation, memory circling one image. The strambotto tradition used it for exactly this, one feeling turned under the light.
It collapses when treated as narrative. Eight alternating rhymes cannot carry plot without sounding like a music box, and beginners who try usually pad lines to reach the rhyme. Keep it to one moment, one mood, and let the pendulum do its work.
What poets can take from this
- Audition both rhyme sounds before drafting; each must serve four endings.
- Match the form to obsessive, returning subjects.
- Intensify across the eight lines instead of arguing.
- Make line eight the strongest sentence; nothing else closes the form.
- Use slant rhyme sparingly to relieve the rhyme burden.
- Write it as one stanza standing alone before attempting sequences.
Try it yourself
Write a Sicilian octave about a sound you cannot stop hearing at night, letting the alternating rhymes mimic its repetition and saving your plainest, hardest sentence for line eight.
Questions
What is the Sicilian octave's rhyme scheme?
ABABABAB: eight lines alternating just two rhyme sounds, traditionally in eleven-syllable Italian lines, rendered in English as iambic pentameter. There is no closing couplet.
How does it differ from ottava rima?
Ottava rima ends ABABABCC, swapping the final alternation for a couplet that snaps shut. The Sicilian octave keeps alternating to the end, giving it an open, incantatory close instead of a click.
Is the Sicilian octave related to the sonnet?
Closely. The sonnet emerged at the same thirteenth-century Sicilian court, and its original octave used this same alternating ABABABAB pattern before ABBAABBA became standard.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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