Which of the following poems uses ‘terza rima’?

The correct answer is P. B. Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind".

What is Terza Rima?
Terza rima is a specific verse form that originated in Italian poetry. It is built on a chain of interlocking three-line stanzas called tercets, following the rhyme scheme ABA BCB CDC DED... and so on. Each middle line of one tercet rhymes with the first and third lines of the next tercet, creating a continuously interlocked, flowing structure. The form was famously used by Dante Alighieri in his monumental work The Divine Comedy. In English poetry, it is a challenging form to sustain because English has far fewer natural rhymes than Italian.

How Shelley Uses Terza Rima in "Ode to the West Wind":
Percy Bysshe Shelley's Ode to the West Wind (1819) is one of the finest and most celebrated uses of terza rima in the English language. The poem is divided into five cantos (sections), each of which is itself a fourteen-line sonnet-like unit. Within each canto, Shelley employs the interlocking rhyme scheme of terza rima for the first twelve lines, followed by a closing rhyming couplet. So the structure of each canto is:

ABA BCB CDC DED EE

This means each canto has four tercets (three-line units with the ABA BCB CDC DED pattern) plus a final couplet (EE) — a structure that closely mirrors the English (Shakespearean) sonnet form, adapted within the terza rima framework.

A Look at the Evidence — Canto I:
The opening lines of Canto I demonstrate the rhyme scheme clearly:

"O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being," — A
"Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead" — B
"Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing," — A

"Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red," — B
"Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou," — C
"Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed" — B

"The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low," — C
"Each like a corpse within its grave, until" — D
"Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow" — C

"Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill" — D
"(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)" — E
"With living hues and odours plain and hill:" — D

"Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;" — E
"Destroyer and Preserver; hear, oh hear!" — E

As you can see, the rhyme pattern ABA BCB CDC DED EE is perfectly intact — the classic terza rima chain, sealed with a closing couplet.

Why the Other Options Are Incorrect:

• John Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale" — This poem is written in ten-line Keatsian ode stanzas with the rhyme scheme ABABCDECDE. It does not use terza rima.

• William Wordsworth's "The Solitary Reaper" — This poem is written in four eight-line stanzas (octaves) with an ABABCCDD rhyme scheme. It has no connection to terza rima.

• Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Ulysses" — This is a dramatic monologue written in blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter). It has no rhyme scheme at all, let alone terza rima.

Conclusion:
Shelley's Ode to the West Wind is the only poem among the given options that employs terza rima. Shelley brilliantly adapts this Italian form — originally perfected by Dante — to the English language, using it to mirror the relentless, spiralling, driving force of the wind itself. The interlocking rhymes create a sense of momentum and inevitability, perfectly matching the poem's themes of destruction, regeneration, and prophetic hope. This masterful use of form in service of theme is what makes Ode to the West Wind a landmark of English Romantic poetry.