The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms - Ross Murfin 2018
Tail-rhyme stanza
Tail-rhyme stanza: A stanza ending with a short line that rhymes with one or more earlier, similarly short lines and in which each short line serves as a “tail” to one or more preceding, longer lines with a different rhyme. Tail-rhyme stanzas often follow the rhyme scheme aabaab or aabccbddbeeb, with b representing the tail-rhymes. The French term for tail-rhyme is rime couée.
EXAMPLE: Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Tale of Sir Thopas” (c. 1387) is written in tail-rhyme stanzas, the first of which follows:
Listeth, lordes, in good entent,
And I wold telle verrayment°verily
Of myrth and of solas;°solace
Al of a knyght was fair and gent
In bataille° and in tourneyment,battle
His name was sire Thopas.