The structure of the sestina is able to produce several effects ; it can be a sign of duress in itself, or serve to echo an existing emotion within the subject matter that it orders.

This resulted in the sestina being imported into France from Italy in the 16th century ; the first French poet to attempt the form, and the only one prior to the 19th century, was Pontus de Tyard who introduced a partial rhyme scheme.

The sestina remains a popular closed verse form, and many sestinas continue to be written by contemporary poets ; notable examples include " The Guest Ellen at the Supper for Street People " by David Ferry and " IVF " by Kona Macphee.

There is no rhyme within the stanzas ; instead the sestina is structured through a recurrent pattern of the words that end each line, a technique known as " lexical repetition ".

We cannot here do more than enumerate the leading troubadours and briefly indicate in what conditions their poetry was developed and through what circumstances it fell into decay and finally disappeared: Peire d ' Alvernha, who in certain respects must be classed with Marcabru ; Arnaut Daniel, remarkable for his complicated versification, the inventor of the sestina, a poetic form for which Dante and Petrarch express an admiration difficult for us to understand ; Arnaut de Mareuil, who, while less famous than Arnaut Daniel, certainly surpasses him in elegant simplicity of form and delicacy of sentiment ; Bertran de Born, now the most generally known of all the troubadours on account of the part he is said to have played both by his sword and his sirveniescs in the struggle between Henry II of England and his rebel sons, though the importance of his part in the events of the time seems to have been greatly exaggerated ; Peire Vidal of Toulouse, a poet of varied inspiration who grew rich with gifts bestowed on him by the greatest nobles of his time ; Guiraut de Borneil, lo macsire dels trobadors, and at any rate master in the art of the so-called close style ( trebar clus ), though he has also left us some songs of charming simplicity ; Gaucelm Faidit, from whom we have a touching lament ( plaint ) on the death of Richard Cœur de Lion ; Folquet of Marseille, the most powerful thinker among the poets of the south, who from being a merchant and troubadour became an abbot, and finally bishop of Toulouse ( d. 1231 ).

This repetition of patterns within a sestina has been given as one of its strengths, though this is also an aspect that has been criticised.

He is also said to have introduced the sestina, originally a Provençal invention, into French poetry.

The sestina is an example of a complex fixed verse form.

The invention of the sestina is traditionally attributed to Arnaut Daniel, a mathematician and troubadour of 12th-century Provence.

The first appearance of the sestina in English print is " Ye wastefull woodes ", comprising lines 151 – 89 of the August Æglogue in Edmund Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar, published in 1579.

The first published ( toward the end of Book I of The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, 1590 ) is the double sestina " Ye Goatherd Gods ".

The third, " Farewell, O sun, Arcadia's clearest light ", is evidently the first rhyming sestina in English: it is in iambic pentameter and follows the standard end-word scheme, but rhymes ababcc in the first stanza ( the rhyme scheme necessarily changes in each subsequent stanza, an interesting consequence of which is that the 6th stanza is inevitably in rhyming couplets ).

After this, there is an absence of notable sestinas for over 250 years, with John Frederick Nims noting that, "... there is not a single sestina in the three volumes of the Oxford anthologies that cover the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The earliest sestina of this period is Algernon Charles Swinburne's " Sestina ".

In the same volume ( Poems and Ballads, Second Series, 1878 ) Swinburne introduces a " double sestina " (" The Complaint of Lisa ") that is unlike Sidney's: it comprises 12 stanzas of 12 iambic pentameter lines each, the first stanza rhyming abcabdcefedf.

The sestina is composed of six stanzas of six lines ( sixains ), followed by a stanza of three lines ( a tercet ).

The pattern of the line-ending words in a sestina is represented both numerically and alphabetically in the following table:

He was the inventor of the sestina, a song of six stanzas of six lines each, with the same end words repeated in every stanza, though arranged in a different and intricate order.

For example, his fourth book of madrigals for five voices begins with a complete sestina by Petrarch, continues with two-part sonnets, and concludes with another sestina: therefore the entire book can be heard as a unified composition with each madrigal a subsidiary part.

It was cultivated by his followers, and by other poets on the continent during the following centuries, who developed the " standard form " of the sestina.

The sestina remains a popular poetic form, and many sestinas continue to be written by contemporary poets.

Nevertheless, variants of the sestina were imitated and developed by Daniel's contemporaries – such as Guilhem Peire Cazals de Caortz – and by subsequent troubadours.

From the 1930s, a revival of the form took place across the English-speaking world, led by poets such as W. H. Auden, and the 1950s were described as the " age of the sestina " by James E. B. Breslin.

" Sestina: Altaforte " by Ezra Pound and " Paysage moralisé " by W. H. Auden are distinguished modern examples of the sestina.

Retrogradatio cruciata: The pattern of end-words in one stanza of a sestina, relative to the previous stanza.

Since the 14th century, the envoi has been seen as an integral part of a number of traditional poetic forms, including, in addition to the ballade and chant royal, the virelai nouveau and the sestina.

Other poets on the continent cultivated the sestina during the 13 – 15th centuries, including Dante and Petrarch in Italy, and Luís de Camões in Portugal.

The involvement of the former two poets in giving the sestina its established form, together with the contributions of others in the country, account for its classification as an Italian verse form – despite not originating there.

William Drummond of Hawthornden published two sestinas ( which he called " sextains ") in 1616, which copy the form of Sidney's rhyming sestina.

Although the sestina has been subject to many revisions throughout its development there remain several features that define the form.

Piepsam's fatal rage arises not only because he cannot stop the cyclist, but also because God will not stop him ; ;

Our Northern brethren also I believe felt a little tender under those censures ; ;

Both these youths, who greatly admired Henrietta, were somewhat younger than she, as were also the neighboring Friedenwald boys, who were then studying medicine ; ;

We may further grant to those of her ( Poetry's ) defenders who are lovers of poetry and yet not poets, the permission to speak in prose on her behalf: let them show not only that she is pleasant but also useful to States and to human life, and we will listen in a kindly spirit ; ;

But I will also remind them that I have always been inclined to skepticism, to a kind of Laodicean lack of commitment so far as public affairs are concerned ; ;

Without really changing the general subject, I take this opportunity to confess that I am troubled by doubts, not only about pacifism, but also when asked to join in the protest against a law that most of those who consider themselves humane and liberal seem to regard as obviously barbarous ; ;

we were also literary ; ;

This includes not only development programing, but also establishing tax policies designed to raise equitably resources for investment ; ;

Small antelope were generally grassed with one shot, and the Magnum carbine also bagged reedbuck, kob and wart hog with deadly efficiency ; ;

Vineyards and orchards also grew around Wright's, and deer were rather a nuisance ; ;

He also met Count Rumford ( born Benjamin Thompson in Woburn, Mass. ) who was then serving the Elector of Bavaria, and the physicist Ritter ; ;

Shipping cost is also reduced ; ;

Observations have also been made at 1.5 mm using optical techniques ( Sinton, 1955, 1956, ; ;