quatrains
Rhymed four-line verses
Quatrains are four-line stanzas of poetry, one of the most common verse forms across languages and traditions.
The term usually implies some rhyme scheme—ABAB, ABBA, or AABB—though unrhymed quatrains exist.
Many longer poems are built from quatrains: The ballad unfolds in simple quatrains.
A single four-line poem is also a quatrain.
Poem's line grouping
Verse rhythm type
- pentameterFive-foot poetic line
- tetrameterFour-foot poetic line
- trimeterThree metrical feet
- syllabicOf speech segments
stress · rhythm · cadence · scansion · foot · beat · quantitative · heptameter
Unpaused verse continuation
- voltaRepeated section's alternate ending
- turnRotational movement
- closureSense of emotional resolution
- compressionForcing into smaller space
parallelism · antithesis · aphorism · epigraph · inscription · epitaph · wit · concision
stanza
Poem's line grouping
iambic
Verse rhythm type
- pentameterFive-foot poetic line
- tetrameterFour-foot poetic line
- trimeterThree metrical feet
syllabic · stress · rhythm · cadence · scansion · foot · beat · quantitative · heptameter
enjambment
Unpaused verse continuation
compression · parallelism · antithesis · aphorism · epigraph · inscription · epitaph · wit · concision · symmetry
Persian
Of or from Iran
- literary formsnovel, novels, novella, poetry, poetry collections
- poetrypoem, poems, poetry, verse, verses
- poetry termspoetry, rhyme, verse, rhythm, meter
- Early English VerseChaucer, Spenser, Milton, Shakespeare, Donne
- Emily DickinsonEmily Dickinson, poems, fascicles, dashes, Lavinia
- poetry typeshaiku, sonnet, limerick, ballad, ode
quatrainscouplets
Paired rhyming verse lines
tercets · triplets · octaves · septets · ottava rima
quatrainsfree verse
Poetry without fixed structure
prose poetry · prose · blank verse · stream of consciousness