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Poetry Guide: 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

"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.
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.
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
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;
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.

External links

Quatrains of Michael J. Farrand.

Other forms

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.