Rubaʿi Rubaʿi Rubāʿī (from "rubāʿiyy", plural "rubāʿiyāt") is the term for a quatrain, a poem or a verse of a poem consisting of four lines. It refers specifically to a form of Persian poetry, or its derivative form in English and other languages In classical Persian poetry, the "ruba'i" is written as a four-line (or two-couplet) poem, with a rhyme-scheme AABA or AAAA. This is an example of a "ruba'i" from Rūmī's Dīwān-i Shams": The usual metre of a Persian "ruba'i", which is used for all four lines of the above quatrain by Rumi, is as follows: In the above scheme,
Burns stanza lyrical, subsequent uses have tended to be comic and satirical, as this passage from Burns shows: A variation on the Burns stanza employs the rhyme scheme AABCCCB, with foreshortened third and seventh lines. This form is deployed, for example, in W. H. Auden's poem "Brother, who when the sirens roar" (also known as "A Communist to Others"): Brothers, who when the sirens roar From office, shop and factory pour By cops directed to the fug Of talkie-houses for a drug, Or down canals to find a hug Auden uses similar verse forms in other poems in the collection "Look, Stranger!"