Quatrain

A quatrain is a poem or a stanza within a poem that consists of four lines. It is the most common of all stanza forms in European poetry.

Basic forms

*abab (from "The Unquiet Grave"): "The wind doth blow today, my love: And a few small drops of rain;: I never had but one true-love: In cold grave she was lain.
*xbyb (from "The Wife of Usher's Well")
: There lived a wife at Usher's Well,
: And a wealthy wife was she;
: She had three stout and stalwart sons,
: And slept with them out at sea.
*aabb (from William Blake, "The Tyger")
: Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
: In the forests of the night,
: What immortal hand or eye
: Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
*abba, also called the envelope stanza or introverted quatrain (from Tennyson In Memoriam): Strong Son of God, immortal Love,: Whom we, that have not seen thy face,: By faith, and faith alone, embrace,: Believeing where we cannot prove;
*aaxa, or the Omar Khayyám stanza (also known as Rubaiyat): Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night,: Has flung the Stone that puts the stars to flight:: And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught: The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of light.

See also

* Nostradamus, writer of prophetic quatrains

External links

*Quatrains of Michael J. Farrand.
*Poetic Form of Quatrain: A Research Note by Dr Manouchehr Saadat Noury.

Other forms

*The heroic stanza or elegiac stanza (iambic pentameters rhyming abab; from Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Church-yard")
: The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
: The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
: The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
: And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
*The Shichigon-zekku form used in Chinese and Japanese poetry. Both rhyme and rhythm are key elements, although the former is not restricted to falling at the end of the phrase.
*Ballad meter (The examples from "The Unquiet Grave" and "The Wife of Usher's Well" are both examples of ballad meter.)
*Various hymns employ specific forms, such as the common meter, long meter, and short meter.