Classical Chinese poetry forms developing a complete poetic concept; this is, indeed, especially the case with the five-character line version. Also known as the Five-character-quatrain, this form of regulated verse is characterized by four lines of five characters each. Also known as the Seven-character-quatrain, this is a form of regulated verse with four lines of seven characters each. While embracing all, or most of, the "lushi" rules and regulations the "pailu" allows for a number of linked couplets with no maximum upward limit. A strict emphasis on formal parallelism is typical of the "pailu" form. Poems based on traditional structures, originally meant as lyrics
Decasyllabic quatrain decasyllabic quatrain contains a stiffness that can not be overcome: You can not vary your stops, as in blank verse or the Spenserian, there is not room enough: and the recurrent divisions necessatated by the stanza lack at once the conciseness and the continuity of the couplet, the variety and amplitude of the rhyme-royal, octave, or Spenserian itself. In his essay on "Annus Mirabilis", A. W. Ward suggests that the decasyllabic quatrain used by Davenant and Dryden, with its insistence on providing each quatrain with the "completeness" given by the final period, causes the verse to strike the reader as