Triolets are innumerable in French literature and are frequently used in newspapers to give a point and brightness to a brief stroke of satire. The earliest triolets in English are those of a devotional nature composed in 1651 by Patrick Cary, a Benedictine monk, at Douai, France.
How many syllables are in a Triolet?
While traditional French triolet contains eight syllables per line, many English triolets use 10-syllable lines. Either count works, as long as you write in iambic tetrameter, in which the first syllable in each two-syllable pair is unstressed, and the second stressed.
Do Triolets have meter?
A triolet is an eight-line verse with a specific structure that gives it a lilting rhythm and pleasant meter. It is not hard to write, once you get the idea, in part because three of the eight lines in the verse are repeated lines!