Quatrain Quatrain A quatrain is a type of stanza, or a complete poem, consisting of four lines. Existing in a variety of forms, the quatrain appears in poems from the poetic traditions of various ancient civilizations including Ancient India, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, and China, and continues into the 21st century, where it is seen in works published in many languages. During Europe's Dark Ages, in the Middle East and especially Iran, polymath poets such as Omar Khayyam continued to popularize this form of poetry, also known as Ruba'i, well beyond their borders and time. Michel de Nostredame (Nostradamus) used the
Sapphic stanza in Polish poetry from the book "Kanikuła, albo psia gwiazda" ("Canicula or dog star"). Zbigniew Morsztyn shaped his Sapphic stanzas so as to make a long chain of linked strophes, exhibiting many enjambments from one to the next stanza. He is the author of the poem "Sławna wiktoryja nad Turkami" ("The Famous Victory over the Turks"), which is an example of the use of the Sapphic stanza in an epic function. Large parts of Klemens Bolesławiusz's "Przeraźliwe echo trąby ostatecznej" ("The Horrifying Echo of Doomsday Trumpet") are composed in Sapphic stanzas. This work, which can be compared to "The Revelation of St. John"