The site has been too quiet for a while so I decided to propose some entertaiment: writing a ballade (not a ballad):

It's a kind of poem, with three main 8-line stanzas, 8 syllabes each, with the same rhyme scheme: a-b-a-b-b-c-b-C (C is the envoi or refrain that must end each stanza (always the same line). In addition there must be a shorter concluding stanza with rhyme b-c-b-C.

We prepared one stanza using english proverbs and a few of our own; I propose you to complete the poem with the other three missing stanzas.

Alternatively, you can write any other ballade. In this case, it would be nice if it included something related to flutes or at least to music.

Here is our first stanza, made out of proverbs:

A miss is as good as a mile
A change is as good as a rest
Too many jokes will spoil the smile
Laugh is much but a smile is best
Can't walk life in a loveproof vest
You can't get blood out of a stone
We try to make of life the best
To such sayings I'm always prone (this is the refrain line)

Yes. The ballade is made of three 8 lines stanzas + one shorter one (4 lines) and all must keep the same rhyme:
a-b-a-b-b-c-b-C except for the final shorter stanza with rhyme b-c-c-C

In other words, a, b, c are required to be the same for all of them
C must be exactly the same line for all stanzas and have the same rhyme as c.

It is not so difficult; what we did was to prepare a list of words that rhyme with a, a list for b, a list for c. Then we searched for proverbs in Internet and chose (or modified) those that rhymed and had 8 syllabes. There are thousands of proverbs listed in different sites that can be googled easily.

The ballade is an ancient form of poetry; François Villon (born in 1431) wrote in French but the genre evolved and some english speaking poets also used it, such as Geoffrey Chaucer in the fourteenth-century, and later Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Algernon Charles Swinburne in the nineteenth-century.

But it would be better to write one ballade from scratch; of course it is not necessary to use proverbs; it was just an idea in the literature workshop where we started the one I posted.

Our workshop is for people that have Spanish instead of English as their mother tongue. For English-native speakers it should be much easier than it is for us. Or so I hope....

The first two stanzas by François Villon of a proverb ballade "The goat that scratches too much can't sleep) go as follows below. Rhymes in French and in English are quite different because of the pronunciation, as do the syllabe counting. I post it here as a curiosity.

Ballade des proverbes

Tant gratte chèvre que mal gît,
Tant va le pot à l'eau qu'il brise,
Tant chauffe-on le fer qu'il rougit,
Tant le maille-on qu'il se débrise,
Tant vaut l'homme comme on le prise,
Tant s'élogne-il qu'il n'en souvient,
Tant mauvais est qu'on le déprise,
Tant crie-l'on Noël qu'il vient.

Tant parle-on qu'on se contredit,
Tant vaut bon bruit que grâce acquise,
Tant promet-on qu'on s'en dédit,
Tant prie-on que chose est acquise,
Tant plus est chère et plus est quise,
Tant la quiert-on qu'on y parvient,
Tant plus commune et moins requise,
Tant crie-l'on Noël qu'il vient.