Quatrain
Also known as four-line stanza
A stanza or poem of four lines. It is the most common stanza in English, and its rhymes are usually ABAB, AABB, ABBA or ABCB.
- ABAB: alternate
- day · rain · away · again
- ABCB: ballad
- day · rain · light · again
In practice
A quatrain is a stanza of four lines, or a whole poem of four lines. It is the most common stanza in English poetry and song, because four lines are enough to set up a thought and turn it, and short enough to hold in the ear at once.
Most quatrains are named by their rhyme. Alternate rhyme (ABAB) links lines across a gap and keeps the stanza moving. Couplet rhyme (AABB) pairs neighbors and sounds decisive. Enclosed rhyme (ABBA) wraps an inner pair inside an outer one. The ballad stanza (ABCB) rhymes only the second and fourth lines, which leaves room for telling a story.
Meter shapes a quatrain as much as rhyme. Ballad and hymn quatrains alternate lines of four and three stresses, which is why they are easy to sing. The heroic quatrain uses four lines of iambic pentameter rhymed ABAB, the same unit that makes up the first twelve lines of a Shakespearean sonnet.
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Types of quatrains
Ballad stanza: ABCB, alternating four and three stresses, as in folk ballads and Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". Common meter, the hymn version, rhymes ABAB with the same alternation and is the stanza Emily Dickinson used most.
Heroic or elegiac quatrain: ABAB in iambic pentameter, as in Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard". Envelope quatrain: ABBA, as in the In Memoriam stanza of Tennyson. Rubai: AABA, the Persian form Edward FitzGerald brought into English in his Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.
Quatrain examples
Gray's "Elegy" opens "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." Day and way rhyme, lea and me rhyme: ABAB, with the slow pentameter matching the evening it describes.
FitzGerald's Rubáiyát rhymes AABA: "The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, / Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit / Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, / Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it." The unrhymed third line holds the thought open for a beat, and the fourth snaps it shut on the A rhyme.
Quatrains in songs and screenplays
Most pop and folk verses are quatrains, and many rhyme ABCB so the singer can tell a story without forcing a rhyme into every line. When a character sings in a screenplay, set each sung line on its own line so a reader hears where the rhymes land.
Plot's lyric element keeps those four lines, and the gap after them, the way they will be sung. A quatrain is also a useful length for a toast, an epitaph or a card a character reads aloud: short enough not to stop the scene, long enough to turn.
Common questions
What is a quatrain in poetry?
A quatrain is a stanza or poem of four lines. It is the most common stanza in English and usually rhymes ABAB, AABB, ABBA or ABCB.
What is an example of a quatrain?
The opening of Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard": four lines of iambic pentameter rhymed ABAB, beginning "The curfew tolls the knell of parting day."
Does a quatrain have to rhyme?
No. Any four-line stanza is a quatrain. Most traditional quatrains rhyme, but free verse and blank verse quatrains do not have to.
How many quatrains are in a sonnet?
A Shakespearean sonnet has three quatrains followed by a couplet, rhymed ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. A Petrarchan sonnet is divided into an octave and a sestet instead.
What is the difference between a quatrain and a stanza?
A stanza is any group of lines in a poem. A quatrain is a stanza of exactly four lines.