“Childe Roland” divides into six-line stanzas, mostly in irregularly stressed pentameter lines. The stanzas rhyme ABBAAB. Much of the language in this poem makes a rough, even unpoetic impression: it reflects the ugly scenery and hellish journey it discusses. Lines such as “In the dock’s harsh swarth leaves...” wind so contortedly that they nearly confound all attempts at reading them aloud. Both the rhyme scheme and the poem’s vocabulary suggest a deliberate archaicness, similar to some of Tennyson’s poems. However, unlike Tennyson’s poems, this poem recreates a medieval world that does not evoke pleasant fairy tales, but rather dark horrors.