Satirical poems in manuscript passed from hand to hand in coffee-houses, casinos and drawing-rooms, and every conspicuous incident in social or political life was borne on a biting quatrain to the confines of the state.
Beware (the quatrain ran) O virtuous wife or maid, Our ruler's fondness for the shade, Lest first he woo thee to the leafy glade And then into the deeper wood persuade.
Wister proposed the baby's health, and I recited a quatrain which came to me early this morning.
From among the tokens of love and reverence may be chosen the quatrain sent by Richard Watson Gilder:-- "How few have rounded out so full a life!
Then, again, in a poem which he called "Lines Written in the Belief That the Ancient Roman Festival of the Dead Was Called Ambarvalia," he voices in an even more striking quatrain the immortality of friendship.
The opening phrases of both octave and sestette are very fine; but the secondquatrain and the second terzina, though with a quality of beauty, both seem somewhat to lack distinctness.
To such an objection as this, Rossetti said: I am rather aghast for my own lucidity when I read what you say as to the first quatrain of my Keats sonnet.
The needful pauses for punctuation are of course allowed, but the sense should not finish at the end of the first quatrain (or quintain), but demand the rest of the verse to complete the idea presented.
The Greek quatrain from which this couplet was extracted is a perfect epigram, and, needing no introduction, contains in itself both the fact and the thought.
In none of these poems does one feel that he has cramped his feelings in order to mortise quatrain into tercet.
I quote the translation of this quatrainfrom Cunninghame-Graham.
The Passionate Householder to His Love The Servants Our Dum'd Animals A Soft Susurrus A Summer Summary A Quatrain To a Light Housekeeper How?
A Quatrain A quatrainfills a little space, Although it's pretty small, And oftentimes, as in this case, It has no point at all.
In the first draught of Third Edition quatrain forty ran thus: As then the Tulip from her wonted sup Of Wine from Heav'n her little Tass lifts ups Do you, twin offspring of the soil, till Heav'n To Earth invert you like an empty cup.
The tenth quatrain read thus in the Third Edition: Well, let it take them!
This legendary heroine of the Tour de Nesle had scarcely taken possession of her new mansion, in August, 1605, when a placard was affixed to her door, inscribed with a quatrain in which her licentious life was satirised.
In many parts of Germany, the dances of harvest were until recent days enlivened by the so-called schnaderhuepfl, a quatrain sung to a simple air, composed on the spot, and often inclining to the personal and the satiric.
In earlier days this power to make a quatrain off-hand seems to have been universal among the peasants of Europe.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "quatrain" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
