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Quatrain

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quatrain
a stanza or poem of four lines, esp one having alternate rhymes
Quatrain 

an individual stanza of four lines. The rhyming pattern in a quatrain is abab (alternating rhyme), aabb (plain rhyme), or abba (enclosing rhyme). Persian poetry and its imitations use the form aaba, and less frequently, aaaa.

The quatrain is used for inscriptions, epitaphs, epigrams, and apothegms. The four-line stanzas of sonnets are also called quatrains. The following poem by F. I. Tiutchev is an example of a quatrain as an independent verse:

Nam ne dano preduagadat’
Kak slovo nashe otzovetsia—
I nam sochuvstvie daetsia,
kak nam daetsia blagodaV ….
We are not given to foresee
What reaction our words will cause—
So we are given sympathy
As if we were given divine grace….
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He thought he had caught Pellisson, but the latter escaped him; he turned towards Sorel, who had, himself, just composed a quatrain in honor of the supper, and the Amphytrion.
Ten Years Later by Dumas, Alexandre View in context
Possibly I recited with a certain joyous lilt which was my own, for--his memory was good, and at a second rendering, very often the first, he made a quatrain his own--he recited the same lines and invested them with an unrest and passionate revolt that was well- nigh convincing.
The Sea Wolf by London, Jack View in context
Some will perhaps think that they detect in the first quatrain an indication of a lost line, which later rhapsodists, failing in imaginative vigour, have supplied by the feeble device of iteration.
Adam Bede by Eliot, George View in context
 
 
 
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