"Quatrain" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this quatrain (which the vulgar mind would accept as it stands, nor expect to treat as other than figurative) Shakespeare was passing in review the writers under the patronage of the earl of Southampton, to whom the sonnet is addressed, and that he can identify the four personifications! ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... father would have disapproved of the way my Philosopher takes his poetry. His favorite poem is "A frog he would a-wooing go,"—especially the first quatrain. His analysis is very defective; he takes it as a whole. He likes the mystery of it, the quick action, ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... he told me at last, women's bodies and souls and the love of them were all very well, but it was the ordered life of a family, children, that counted; the family was the immortal chain on which lives were strung; and he recited this quatrain, saying, in that proud awefilled tone with which Latins speak of creative achievement, "By our ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... feel as well as understand a lesson, as in "The Concord Hymn" and "Forbearance." If we could all write on the tablets of our hearts that single stanza, forbearance would be a real factor in life. And it is to this poet whom we call unemotional that we owe this inspiring quatrain: ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... whispering some further instructions to Tommy, who again took up his desultory ballad, while I turned and fled for the street, catching, however, as I went, and high above the laughter of the crowd, the satire of this quatrain to its latest line— ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... reason, the rather insipid quatrain was tortured into a baleful prophecy. It was considered very ominous that the battery should be first opened against this Sibylline tower. The chimes, too, which had been playing, all through the siege, the music of Marot's sacred songs, happened that morning to be ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Recompense. Herrick is said to have assumed the lay habit on his return to London after his ejection, perhaps as a protection against further persecution. This quatrain may be taken as evidence that he did not throw off his religion with his cassock. Compare ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... obscure piece of writing. The first quatrain lays down the principle that ill-doing brings its own inevitable punishment. The second distinguishes between the unblessed suffering which plagues the soul, and that which we welcome as a process of purgation. The first terzet makes heaven and hell respectively consist of a clean and a burdened ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... at age of sixteen wrote a quatrain, "The Banquet of Nebuchadnezzar," and at once left school; followed it up in less than two years by a poem in six lines "America"; rested a year and then produced "Babylon, A Vision of Civilization," three lines; has written also "Herod, a Tragedy," four lines; "Revolt ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... Medici, if only he may so escape from poverty and dullness. Michael Angelo, we must remember, owed a debt of gratitude as an artist to the Medici for his education in the gardens of Lorenzo. Moreover, the quatrain which he wrote for his statue of the Night justifies us in regarding that chapel as the cenotaph designed by him for murdered Liberty. Machiavelli owed nothing to the Medici, who had disgraced and tortured him, and whom he had opposed in all his public ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... for pro is not more unlike con than man is unlike woman— yet men and women marry every day with none to say, "Oh, the pity of it!" but I and fools like me! Now wherewithal shall we please you? We can rhyme you couplet, triolet, quatrain, sonnet,rondolet, ballade, what you will. Or we can dance you saraband, gondolet, ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... de La Union de Cuba, a warm Carlist partisan, to whom I had an introduction, and thence I went to St. Jean de Luz, a drowsy, quaint, world-forgotten nook. A petit Paris it was called in a vaunting quatrain by some minstrel of yore. But Brussels may be comforted. It is nothing of the kind, but something infinitely better. The breezes from the main and the mountains, from the Bay of Biscay and the Pyrenees, conspire to supply it with ozone. ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... that to Allison, "Treasure Island" is the ne plus ultra and composite of all pirate stories, and this marvel of delight he called to Waller's attention while they were incubating "The Ogallallas." No sooner had Waller read it than the quatrain of Old Billy Bones took possession of him and converted itself into music. The two of them, as so many other thousands had done, bewailed the parsimony of Stevenson in the use and development of the grisly suggestion and Waller declared that if Allison would complete ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... through the crowd, crooning a quatrain, in a low, monotonous voice, his eyelids drooping and his head forward on ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... printer, in 1564, octavo. It contains 121 full-page wood-engravings of costume; it is a little difficult, however, to see why the 'sauvages' should be included in a book of costume. But perhaps they are covered by the phrase 'apres le naturel.' Beneath each engraving is a rhyming and punning quatrain. Here is the one beneath the portrait of a young lady of demure appearance, entitled ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... 'May-day' to come till I come. There were a few indispensable corrections made and sent to the printer, which he reserved to be corrected on the plates, but of which no revise was ever sent to me; and as good publish no book as leave these errata unexpunged. Then there is one quatrain, to which his notice was not called, for which I wish to substitute another. So I entreat you not to finish the book except for the fire until I come. As the public did not die for the book on the 1st January, I presume they can sustain its absence on the 1st April.... ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... the Beni 'Amr. The Muslimah, therefore, became exiles, and took refuge in Egypt. And in the flow of days it so happened that the Shaykh of the Beni' Amr awoke suddenly at midnight, and heard his wife, as she sat grinding at the quern, sing this quatrain:— ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... man must return. The two poems are fully discussed in Poet-Lore, Volume VII, April, May, June-July. The poems are noteworthy for the fusion of human emotion and natural scenery and for the startlingly specific phrasing of the first quatrain. ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... certificate of his services, which he generally sollicits from all those whom he conducts to the Volcano. I asked him for his certificate book, and begged to know whether he would have it in prose or verse. He laughed and said: Vostra Excellenza e padrone. I took out my pencil and wrote the following quatrain: ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... been used, before Gray's time, by Sir John Davies for his Immortality of the Soul, Sir William Davenant in his Gondibert, and Dryden in his Annus Mirabilis, and others; but in no instance so happily as here by Gray. In the Elegy the quatrain has not the somewhat disjunctive and isolating effect that it has in some other works where there is continuous argument or narrative that should run on with as few metrical hindrances as possible. It is well adapted to convey a series of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... to give too much weight to the opinion that Shakespeare has been over-influenced by Daniel in the adoption of the quatrain and couplet structure. The whole period from Wyatt to Shakespeare shows a slow and steady mastery of the native over the foreign tendency. The change was not a sudden leap on the part of Daniel and Shakespeare, but a gradual growth occupying ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable
... to this particular anomaly in German prose-writing, I advise all beginners to choose between two classes of composition—ballad poetry, or comedy—as their earliest school of exercise; ballad poetry, because the form of the stanza (usually a quatrain) prescribes a very narrow range to the sentences; comedy, because the form of dialogue, and the imitation of daily life in its ordinary tone of conversation, and the spirit of comedy naturally suggesting ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... Occasionally a number of young men will join together and form a kind of literary club, meeting at certain periods to read essays or poems on subjects previously agreed upon by all. We heard of one youth who, burning for the poet's laurel, produced the following quatrain on snow, which had been chosen as ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... the field of Venus may readily be imagined from a quatrain that was affixed in a conspicuous part of the Church of St. ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... symbolic intention, and the picture would do well for an illustration to some poem to be found in "Les fleurs du Mal". It may be worth while to note here that Baudelaire printed in his volume a quatrain inspired by ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... itself in smaller subscriptions to public or private objects than the donor's means will justify has naturally met with keen reproach. Herrick has a quatrain directed against the failing; and everyone remembers the lines about the man who declared that at the sound of woe his hand was ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... the sun-dial, in the garden, and listened, well pleased, to John's eager voice, as he pointed out the spots endeared to him by memories of childhood. The sun-dial! How he had pondered over the quatrain, chiseled in the stone:— ...
— Old Valentines - A Love Story • Munson Aldrich Havens
... That quatrain may suffice to decorate our page. And in connection with his college days I may mention his first novel, a short romance entitled Fanshawe, which was published in Boston in 1828, three years after he graduated. It was probably also written after that event, ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... maintain it. May win it, but not wear it. You have said truly, the house of Rookwood is a fated house; and it hath been said likewise, that if he wed not one of his own kindred—that if Rook mate not with Rook, his possessions shall pass away from his hands. Listen to this prophetic quatrain: ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... finest and most convincing tribute to the overwhelming genius of the great Finnish romancer is the quatrain recently written in his honour by Mr. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... feeling—they are like birds that not only enchant us with their delicious notes, but nestle against us with their soft breasts, and make us feel the agitated beating of their hearts. He indicates a whole sad history in a single quatrain; there is not an image in it, not a thought; but it is beautiful, simple, and perfect as a "big round tear"—it is pure ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... brief essay, composed at a meeting of the Blue Pencil Club, is excellent, and his concluding quatrain regular and melodious. We wish, however, that he would give us some more of the serious fiction that he can write so splendidly, and which used several years ago to ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... resemble the following quatrain in the Satyre Menippee, being one of the several verses appended to the tapestry on which was ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 14. Saturday, February 2, 1850 • Various
... gracious to me.... I suppose you have heard of his dinner on the capture of Valenciennes. We sat from five till half-past ten, and many were very drunk, particularly H.R.H. He really did the honours most admirably...." In the next letter, of the early part of August 1796, Mornington sends a quatrain of Latin Elegiacs which he had composed at Dundas's house, on the exploits of Wurmser in relieving Mantua, of Davidovitch at Roveredo, and Quosdanovitch at Brescia (not Verona), which seemed to presage the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... one opposed my design, I took the pen, and wrote six sorts of hands used among the Arabians, and each specimen contained an extemporary distich or quatrain (a stanza of four lines) in praise of the sultan. When I had done, the officers took the roll, and ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... back of this title is printed a short address from the translator to the Edele ende welghesinde Leser, which states little more than that the original had been received from England, and concludes with the subsequent quatrain:— ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 67, February 8, 1851 • Various
... occasion of the meeting of which the following gems of poesy are the result, the several members of the club engaged to write up the well-known tradition of the Purple Cow in more elaborate form than the quatrain made ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... me that? The whole duty of man in a quatrain! And remark, I do not set up to be a professional bard; these are ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the characteristics of these poets, both in matter and form, are sufficiently uniform and sufficiently interesting. Metrically, they show, on the one side, a desire to use a rejuvenated heroic, either in couplets or in various combined forms, the simplest of which is the elegiac quatrain of alternately rhyming lines, and the most complicated the sonnet; while between them various stanzas more or less suggested by Italian are to be ranked. Of this thing there has been and will be no end as long as English poetry lasts. The attempt to arrange the old and ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... Brodie, who was born in 1736, and died in 1817, she knew how two generations before her people lived and thought. So that I have a grasp on the past which many might envy, and yet the present and the future are even more to me, as they were to my mother. On her death in 1887 I wrote a quatrain for her memorial, and which those ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... this admirable homily, and to insinuate insincerity. But human nature affords every-day examples of just such perfectly sincere inconsistency as we find between the sixth stanza and Burns's own conduct; while not inconsistency but a very genuine rhetoric inspires the characteristic quatrain which closes the seventh. ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... the Idiot. "But when the compositor in the marble-yard got it engraved on the monument, my friend was away, and when the army post that was to pay the bill received the monument, the quatrain read, ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... whatever that these miserable lines were really written by Lee, except that the measure is the fashionable quatrain of the period. It is singular that Stanton read on without suspicion of his own danger, quite absorbed in the album of a madhouse, without ever reflecting on the place where he was, and which such compositions too ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... Zelle." After the Preface comes "Diuerses Tables de Mort, non painctes, mais extraictes de l'escripture saincte, colorees par Docteurs Ecclesiastiques, & umbragees par Philosophes." Then follow the cuts, forty-one in number, each having its text from the Latin Bible above it, and below, its quatrain in French, this latter being understood to be from the pen of one Gilles Corozet. To the cuts succeed various makeweight Appendices of a didactic and hortatory character, the whole being wound up by a profitable discourse, De la Necessite de la ...
— The Dance of Death • Hans Holbein
... the night before might prove a wholesome tonic for this effusive young lady, "I have a few verses which I will venture to ask her to accept." So saying, she took a piece of peach-blossom paper, on which she carefully copied the quatrain and handed it to the woman. "May I trouble you," said she, "to take ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... from each other in some respects, resemble each other in many. They are much alike in hue and feature; speak amongst themselves much the same tongue; exercise much the same trades, and are addicted to the same evil practices. There is a little English Gypsy gillie, or song, of which the following quatrain is a translation, containing four queries, to all of which the English Romano might respond by Ava, and the foreign Chal by the same affirmative to the three first, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... March he would come along singing and with a violet in his hat, and as full of intoxicating power as his casks, and would make them all happy, inn-keepers and girls; there was a quatrain about him which all the lads along the Carinthian Road used to sing when they wanted to tease the love-sick girls. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... Edinburgh. They are both distinguished, like the philosopher in Andersen's Drop of Ditchwater, by having no name; but a quotation is appended to each of the numbers in the catalogue, and is to be supposed to indicate, the subject. No. 9, in the Great Room, has this quatrain from Tennyson— ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... be read: that means that an author is vitally alive, not dead on the shelves of a library where he has been placed out of deference to the literary Mrs. Grundy. Lessing felt this when he wrote his brilliant quatrain: ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... appointed her a maid of honor. It is a question whether she did not even then exercise over Charles VII. that influence, serviceable alike to the honor of the king and of France, which was to inspire Francis I., a century later, with this gallant quatrain: ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Hatch, one evening, when they were talking in the Pardee back yard. It was nine o'clock. Dishes done. A moon. October. Maxine had just murmured her little quatrain. They were standing by the hedge of pampas grass that separated the Pardee ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... 23: This is a description of the Tuscan rispetto. In Sicily the stanza generally consists of eight lines rhyming alternately throughout, while in the North of Italy it is normally a simple quatrain. The same poetical material assumes in Northern, Central, and Southern Italy ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... complain," said Confucius. "Can't we adopt a house rule that poets must not be inspired between the hours of 11 A.M. and 5 P.M., or in the evening after eight; that any poet discovered using more than five arm-chairs in the composition of a quatrain will be charged two oboli an hour for each chair in excess of that number; and that the billiard-marker shall be required to charge a premium of three times the ordinary fee for tables used by versifiers in lieu ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... represented by the rhymes. It is not absurd to speak of the natural "size" of poetic thoughts. Pope, for instance, often works with ideas of couplet size, just as Martial sometimes amused himself with ideas of a still smaller epigram size, or Omar Khayyam with thoughts and fancies that came in quatrain sizes. Many sonnets fail of effectiveness because the contained thought is too scanty or too full to receive adequate expression in the fourteen lines demanded by the traditional sonnet form. They are sometimes only quatrain ideas, blown up big with ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... specimens of this interesting emotional product are to be found in the words of Royalty Ballads. A good instance is to be found in the following choice quatrain:— ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 19th, 1914 • Various
... piano and accompany, after a fashion, a woman who consented after much pressing to sing a ballad learned by heart in a month of hard practice. Incapable though he was of any feeling for poetry, he would boldly ask permission to retire for ten minutes to compose an impromptu, and return with a quatrain, flat as a pancake, wherein rhyme did duty for reason. M. du Chatelet had besides a very pretty talent for filling in the ground of the Princess' worsted work after the flowers had been begun; he held her skeins ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... of Chesterfield, was a brunette; the younger, who married Colonel Anson, the most renowned lady-killer of his day, was a blonde; and they were both of them exquisitely pretty, and used to remind me of the French quatrain— ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... the end of Aristotle's Poetics, which Dr. Cook edited.] we cite one stanza; and we cannot be supposed to select unfairly, because it is the stanza which Mathias praises in extravagant terms. "Here," says he, "Gray, Cook, and Nature, do seem to contend for the mastery." The English quatrain must be familiar ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... cliffs to Calais sands and back, pleasantly beguiled the way down to the Hotel du Paradis, under the Mausoleum heights, where Skepsey fumbled at his pocket for coin current; but the Frenchman, all shaken by a tornado of negation, clapped him on the shoulder, and sang him a quatrain. Skepsey had in politeness to stand listening, and blinking, plunged in the contrition of ignorance, eclipsed. He took it to signify something to the effect, that money should not pass between friends. It was the amatory farewell address ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... spangled pair of lovers true, And, whitened schemers twain, The scholar hears in each of you A note of that quatrain; The dim Renaissance seems to spin Around your satin shoon, Fair Columbine, feat ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... and institutions. 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. The Duke's gift of Boscofolto to the Countess Belverde had stirred up a swarm of epigrams, and the most malignant among them, Crescenti averred, were openly ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... quatrain Greek reads your soul, and Hebrew my eye and precedes this line by shall weep indeed which Greek omits. The last line is one of those longer ones with which verses or strophes ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... the same time—how should he put it?—a little infinite. He thought of Anne, of love hopeless and unattainable. Perhaps that was the ideal kind of love, the hopeless kind—the quiet, theoretical kind of love. In this sad mood of repletion he could well believe it. He began to write. One elegant quatrain had flowed ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... of apprehension, I declare that I will adopt him as my son." Perceiving that no one opposed my design, I took the pen, and wrote six sorts of hands used among the Arabians, and each specimen contained an extemporary distich or quatrain in praise of the sultan. My writing not only excelled that of the merchants, but was such as they had not before seen in that country. When I had done, the officers took the roll, and ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... me for what you are pleased to call my falsehood, your majesty proves that I have spoken the truth," cried Voltaire, eagerly. "You wish to show me that the fruit of your muse ripens slowly, and you improvise a charming quatrain that Moliere himself would be proud ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... the last quatrain is also very effective. The poem, on the whole, however, is chiefly to be admired for the graceful insouciance of its metre, so well in accordance with the character of the sentiments, and especially for the ease of the ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... second son of John Hoppner, R.A., was appointed English Consul at Venice, October, 1814. (See Letters, 1900, iv. 83, note I.) The quatrain was translated (see the following poem) into eleven different languages—Greek, Latin, Italian (also the Venetian dialect), German, French, Spanish, Illyrian, Hebrew, Armenian, and Samaritan, and printed "in a small neat volume in the seminary of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... noblewoman. Another, with its savage eye—it is a profile—and big beaver head-covering, recalls Walt Whitman's "I wear my hat as I please, indoors or out." A giant egoist, and as human, all too human, a fellow as Spain ever begot, Goya is only hinted at in Baudelaire's searching quatrain beginning: "Goya, cauchemar plein de choses inconnues." Fleurs du Mal would be a happy title for the work of Francisco Goya if to "The Flowers of Evil" were added "and Wisdom." Goya is often cruel and lascivious and vulgar, but he is as great ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... leave Brest after he had been ordered to the Mediterranean, repeatedly said to me, "What the devil is Gantheaume about?" With one of the daily reports sent to the First Consul he received the following quatrain, which made him ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... a violent conflagration broke out leaving only the round towers of the Conciergerie, the tower and the church, and that part of the main structure which housed the great Salle de Marbre, unharmed. Apropos of this, a joyous rhymester of the time made the following quatrain: ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... future transmigration to our satellite—the bleakness of whose scenery she had not realized—having given him some cause of offence, he stormed out to his nurse that he "could not bear the sight of the witch," and vented his wrath in the quatrain.— ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... insight in Blake's Song of Innocence, "Piping down the valleys wild," or in Wordsworth's line, "Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears," or in Keats' single verse, "There is a budding morrow in midnight," or in this quatrain on Poetry, by a ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... Choulette if he had finished the portrait of Misery on his stick. Misery had now become a figure of Piety, and Choulette recognized the Virgin in it. He had even composed a quatrain which he was to write on it in spiral form—a didactic and moral quatrain. He would cease to write, except in the style of the commandments of God rendered into French verses. The four lines expressed simplicity and goodness. ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... see that rhyme may be admissible and even necessary. Pope's couplet may (or may not) stand for elegiacs, and the In Memoriam stanza for some one of Horace's metres. Where the heroes of Virgil's Eclogues sing alternately four lines each, Gray's quatrain seems to suggest itself: and where a similar case occurs in these Idylls (as for instance in the ninth) I thought it might be met by taking whatever received English stanza was nearest the required length. Pope's couplet again may possibly best convey the pomposity ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... in spite of a too generous spreading of advertisements. Bud Tipworthy had been sent out to besiege Miss Tibbs, all of whose recent buds of rhyme had been hot-housed into inky blossom during the week, and after a long absence the youth returned with a somewhat abrupt quatrain, entitled "The Parisians of Old," which she had produced while he waited—only four lines, according to the measure they meted, which was not regardful of art—less than a drop in the bucket, or, to preserve the figure, a single posy ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... France, the sense must be completed in one couplet and not run on to a second; and, as the parts cohere very loosely, separate quotation can generally be made without injuring their proper effect. A favourite form is the Ruba'i or quatrain, made familiar to English ears by Mr. Fitzgerald's masterly adaptation of Omar-i-Khayyam: the movement is generally aa ba, but it also appears as ab cb, in which case it is a Kit'ah or fragment. The Murabba, tetrastichs or four fold-song, occurs once only in The Nights (vol.i. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... features of the Nights is the promptitude with which everyone—porters, fishermen, ladies, caliphs—recites poetry. It is as if a cabman when you have paid him your fare were to give you a quatrain from FitzGerald's rendering of Omar Khayyam, or a cripple when soliciting your charity should quote Swinburne's Atalanta. Then in the midst of all this culture, kindliness, generosity, kingliness, honest mirth,—just ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... province of the Minho it is not uncommon at these gatherings for a match of improvisation to be held between two rustic bards. One takes his guitar, and in a slow, drawling recitative sings a simple quatrain, which the other at once caps with a second in rhyme and rhythm matching the first. Verse follows verse in steady succession, and the singer who hesitates is lost: his rival rushes in with a tide of rhyme which carries all before it. In such primitive pleasures the shepherds ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... poetical defects fatal for its popularity; the theme was not happily chosen; the quatrain has been discovered by capricious ears to be unpleasing, though its solemnity was felt by Dryden.[323] The style is sometimes harsh and abrupt, though often exquisite; and the fable is deficient in that rapid interest which the story-loving readers of all times seem most to regard. ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... angry waters of the open North Sea. To my surprise the steamer, though island-owned, did not fly the British red ensign, but the Heligoland flag of horizontal bars of white, green, and red. There is a local quatrain explaining these colours, which may be roughly ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton |
