initial five stanzas are tercets, followed by a concluding quatrain.

A tercet may also form the separate halves of the ending sestet in a Petrarchan sonnet, where the rhyme scheme is , as in Longfellow's "Cross of Snow". For example, while "Cross of Snow" is indeed a Petrarchan sonnet, it does not follow the form of. Instead, its form is . A tercet also ends sestinas where the keywords of the lines