What Are Quatrain Poems?
Quatrain poems are divided by sections, or stanzas, containing four lines each. This type of poetry is generally rhymed, though not always, and can adhere to any metric form. Different styles of quatrain poems include ballad, heroic, rhyme enclosure, 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.
Quatrain poems are divided by sections, or stanzas, containing four lines each. This type of poetry is generally rhymed, though not always, and can adhere to any metric form. Different styles of quatrain poems include ballad, heroic, rhyme enclosure, 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 William Blake’s The Sick Rose: O Rose, thou art sick! The invisible worm, That flies in the night, In the howling storm, Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy; And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy. Rhymed quatrain poems can adopt different patterns, 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, in which the second and third lines of a stanza rhyme, while the first and
