SHE walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies,
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meets in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress
Or softly lightens o'er her face,
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
And on that cheek and o'er that brow
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent;
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent.
*****
There be none of Beauty's daughters
With a magic like thee;
And like music on the waters
Is thy sweet voice to me:
When, as if its sound were causing
The charmed ocean's pausing,
The waves lie still and gleaming,
And the lulled winds seem dreaming;
And the midnight moon is weaving
Her bright chain o'er the deep,
Whose breast is gently heaving
As an infant's asleep:
So the spirit bows before thee,
To listen and adore thee,
With a full but soft emotion,
Like the swell of Summer's ocean.
原畫（Two Tufts of Epidendrum, p.324, Fig. 185 此畫為波士頓私人收藏。）的文字是不同的：
多買蘭花要整根 根深土密自生孫
謾說（？）今歲花開好 更看來春花滿盆。
請幫忙猜測 謾字之後的字眼
The quatrain may be translated approximately as follows:
Who buys orchids often, wants the roots complete.
From roots set deep in compact soil fresh roots will grow.
There is much idle talk this year that the flowers will do well.
And You will see, come spring, a pot full of flowers.
stanza
n.
One of the divisions of a poem, composed of two or more lines usually characterized by a common pattern of meter, rhyme, and number of lines.
[Italian. See stance.]
quat・rain
A quatrain is a poem, or a stanza within a poem, that consists always of four lines. It is the most common of all stanza forms in European poetry. The rhyming patterns include aabb, abab, abba, abcb.
In its narrow meaning, the term is restricted to a complete poem consisting of only four lines. In its broader sense, it includes any one of many four-verse stanza forms.
Basic forms
- abab (from "The Unquiet Grave")
- "The wind doth blow today, my love
- And a few small drops of rain;
- I never had but one true-love
- In cold grave she was lain.
- abcb (from "The Wife of Usher's Well")
- There lived a wife at Usher's Well,
- And a wealthy wife was she;
- She had three stout and stalwart sons,
- And sent them over the sea.
- aabb (from William Blake, "The Tyger")
- Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
- In the forests of the night,
- What immortal hand or eye
- Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
- abba, also called the envelope stanza or introverted quatrain (from Tennyson In Memoriam)
- Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
- Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
- By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
- Believeing where we cannot prove;
- aaba, or the Omar Khayyám stanza (also known as Rubaiyat)
- Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night,
- Has flung the Stone that puts the stars to flight:
- And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
- The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of light.
Other forms
- The heroic stanza or elegiac stanza (iambic pentameter, rhyming ABAB; from Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Church-yard")
- The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
- The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
- The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
- And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
- The Shichigon-zekku form used in Chinese and Japanese poetry. Both rhyme and rhythm are key elements, although the former is not restricted to falling at the end of the phrase.
- Ballad meter (The examples from "The Unquiet Grave" and "The Wife of Usher's Well" are both examples of ballad meter.)
- Various hymns employ specific forms, such as the common meter, long meter, and short meter.
See also
- Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, a collection of Persian quatrains written by Omar Khayyám
- Nostradamus, writer of prophetic quatrains
External links
Poetic Form of Quatrain: A Research Note by Dr Manouchehr Saadat Noury.stanz
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