Quatrain poems consist of four-line stanzas and can be rhymed or unrhymed with various metric forms. Examples include ballad, heroic, and Shakespearean sonnets. The only rule is four lines per verse.
Quatrain poems are divided into sections, or stanzas, containing four lines each. This type of poetry is usually rhymed, though not always, and can adhere to any metric form. Different styles of quatrain poems include ballad, heroic, rhymed close, triple, double couplet, and unrhymed. The quatrain has been a popular poetic form for many influential writers, such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Shakespeare and Nostradamus.
A textbook example of quatrain poetry can be found in The Sick Rose by William Blake:
O Rosa, you are sick!
The invisible worm,
flying in the night,
In the howling storm,
He discovered your bed
Of crimson joy;
And her dark secret love
Your life destroys.
Rhymed quatrain poems can adopt several models, many of which are identified by specific descriptive names. “The Sick Rose,” for example, is written in ballad form. Ballad quatrains are normally constructed in an ABCB pattern, where the second and third lines of a stanza rhyme, while the first and third lines do not.
Other categories of quatrain poems are similarly named and also described by their rhyming patterns. The heroic quatrain uses an ABAB model. A rhyming fenced quatrain uses an ABBA, inserting a rhyme between the first and fourth rhyming lines of a verse. A triple quatrain uses an AABA pattern, in which there are three rhyming lines, and a double couplet uses an AABB pattern. However, not all quatrains are written in a rhyming pattern. For example, the Scottish poet Frank Kuppner made a career of writing unrhymed quatrain poems.
One of the most popular and enduring forms of quatrain poetry is the Shakespearean sonnet, also called the English sonnet. These poems consist of three stanzas in quatrains followed by a couplet. Shakespeare made this style famous, but many other poets have adopted the form. Perhaps the most famous English sonnet is the one written by Shakespeare himself, sonnet 18. The sonnet begins with the famous line: “Shall I compare you to a summer day?”
Although the stanzas of an English sonnet are written primarily in iambic pentameter, quatrain poems need not use one meter form over another. Indeed, just as one can write unrhymed quatrains, one could also write quatrains that do not follow any particular rhyme pattern. The only rule needed to write a quatrain is to have four lines per verse, the rest is up to the poet.
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