Quatrains can be traced back to the literary traditions of several ancient civilisations, including Persia, India, Greece, Rome, and China, and continue to dominate poems even today. This is due to a quatrain's versatility with different rhyme schemes and its neatness and regularity. Let us look at the meaning of a quatrain, the rules and formats they exist in and a few examples of poems that use quatrains to better understand this form.
Quatrain meaning
The word 'quatrain' comes from the French word quatre, which means 'four'. A quatrain is a type of stanza that has only four lines, usually with a specific rhyme scheme.
Stanza: A stanza is a group of lines in a poem, arranged as a unit, similar to a paragraph in prose. Stanzas of a poem are separated by a blank line.
A quatrain can exist both as a standalone poem of just four lines or exist as a four-lined stanza within a larger poem.
At four lines, with the quatrain, we reach the basic stanza form familiar from a whole range of English poetic practice. This is the length of the ballad stanza, the verse of a hymn, and innumerable other kinds of verse.1
The quatrain was originally from Ancient Greece and Rome. However, it was popularised as a poetic form when Omar Khayyam, a Persian poet, astronomer and mathematician, made sole use of the quatrain in his book Rubáiyát (Arabic word meaning 'quatrains') written in 1120 A.C.E. In 1859, Omár Khayyám's work was loosely translated from Persian to English by English poet Edward Fitzgerald, who published the selection of quatrains in a book titled Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám: the Astronomer-Poet of Persia (1859). The popularity of Fitzgerald's translated work is what led to the introduction of quatrains in English Literature.
Fig.1 - Portrait of Omar Khayyam.
Quatrain rules
Quatrains are known for being versatile and hence have only two rules that make up this poetic form.
Length
A stanza can only be called a quatrain if it has exactly four lines. Any stanza with lines more or less than four does qualify as a quatrain.
Hence, if a poem has multiple stanzas that are all quatrains, each four-lined stanza would be demarcated clearly by a blank line that would separate it from the subsequent stanza.
Emily Dickinson's poem 'Hope is the Thing with Feathers' (1891) clearly shows how multiple quatrains can be structured within one poem.
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -
I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.
The four-line length of a quatrain makes it perfect for conveying a full thought or even a short narrative within a stanza. This makes it an ideal divisive unit for poetry, as it allows writers to divide the poem into neat and coherent stanzas that each convey a full thought or narrative, much like different chapters of a book!
Rhyme scheme
In most cases, quatrains contain some sort of rhyme scheme and meter, although some poets have used quatrains in free verse and blank verse.
There are fifteen different possible rhyme schemes that can be used within a quatrain. However, here are the ones most commonly used by poets:
AAAA (monorhyme)AABB (double couplet)ABAB (alternate rhyme)ABBA (enclosed rhyme)ABAC/ ABCB (ballad quatrain)
A poet can have a poem with multiple quatrains all with the same exact rhyme scheme, or choose to change the rhyme scheme from stanza to stanza. In some cases, half rhymes are also acceptable instead of perfect rhymes.
Half rhyme: When the ending consonant sounds of words are the same, but their ending vowel sounds are not, they are called half rhymes (otherwise known as slant rhymes or near rhymes). Example: 'young' and 'song'.
The wide array of possibilities available while writing in quatrains allows poets to enjoy some creative freedom while keeping their poems neatly structured and coherent.
Quatrain poem format
Quatrains are commonly seen in formal verses, although they make a frequent appearance in free verse and in rarer cases, blank verse.
Quatrains in formal verse
Quatrains work best within a formal verse, as these poems have a fixed metric pattern and rhyme scheme. Based on some of the most commonly used rhyme schemes and metric patterns within quatrains, they can be divided into four types.
Heroic stanza
The heroic stanza is a type of quatrain that follows a rhyme scheme of either ABAB (alternative rhyme) or AABB (double couplet). They are written in the metric pattern of iambic pentameter.
Iambic pentameter: A type of metric line used in English poetry that makes use of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (iamb) five times (pentameter).
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