To put it positively, nonce quatrains are four-line stanzas invented by the poet for the particular poem, but they might best be defined in terms of what they are not. They are not ballad stanzas, common measure, long measure, short measure, In Memoriam stanzas, Rubaiyat stanzas, or heroic quatrains. Also excluded here (arbitrarily) from nonce quatrains are two other fairly common configurations: longer quatrains rhyming abab and quatrains of all lengths rhyming aabb. There are, therefore, no very definite criteria; nonce quatrains are just not very common either in meter or rhyming pattern--as, for example, in Emily Brontë's well-known poem, which rhymes like several named quatrains but which alternates trimeter and pentameter in an unusual way:

                   NO coward soul is mine,
            No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere;
                  I see Heaven's glories shine,
            And Faith shines equal, arming me from fear.

                  O God within my breast,
            Almighty, ever-present Deity!
                  Life--that in me has rest,
            As I--undying Life--have power in Thee!
                                        --Emily Brontë
 

                            O little white feet of mine)
                            Out in the storm and the rain you fly;
                            (Red, red shoes the colour of wine)
                            Can the children hear my cry?

                            (O little white feet of mine)
                            Never a child in the whole great town;
                            (Red, red shoes the colour of wine)
                            Lights out and the blinds pulled down.
                                                        --Katherine Mansfield

                            In my heart the old love
                             Struggled with the new;
                            It was ghostly waking
                             All night through.

                            Dear things, kind things,
                             That my old love said,
                            Ranged themselves reproachfully
                             Round my bed.

                            But I could not heed them,
                             For I seemed to see
                            The eyes of my new love
                             Fixed on me.

                            Old love, old love,
                             How can I be true?
                            Shall I be faithless to myself
                             Or to you?
                                            --Sara Teasdale

        I.

                            Grand rough old Martin Luther
                              Bloomed fables---flowers on furze,
                            The better the uncouther:
                              Do roses stick like burrs?

                                    II.

                            A beggar asked an alms
                              One day at an abbey-door,
                            Said Luther; but, seized with qualms,
                              The abbot replied, ``We're poor!
                                                            --Robert Browning
                            HITHER hither, love---
                                  'Tis a shady mead---
                            Hither, hither, love!
                                  Let us feed and feed!

                            Hither, hither, sweet---
                                  'Tis a cowslip bed---
                            Hither, hither, sweet!
                                  'Tis with dew bespread!
                                                                --John Keats

                             Peace flows into me
                             As the tide to the pool by the shore;
                             It is mine forevermore,
                            It will not ebb like the sea.

                            I am the pool of blue
                             That worships the vivid sky;
                             My hopes were heaven-high,
                            They are all fulfilled in you.

                            I am the pool of gold
                             When sunset burns and dies --
                             You are my deepening skies;
                            Give me your stars to hold.
                                                                --Sara Teasdale
 

            And when the world despises--
            When Heaven repels my prayer--
            Will not mine angel comfort?
            Mine idol hear?

            Yes, by the tears I'm poured,
            By all my hours of pain
            O I shall surely win thee,
            Beloved, again!
                        --Emily Brontë

                   WHITHER, midst falling dew,
            While glow the heavens with the last steps of day
            Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue
                  Thy solitary way?

                  Vainly the fowler's eye
            Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong
            As, darkly seen against the crimson sky,
                  Thy figure floats along.

                  Seek'st thou the plashy brink
            Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
            Or where the rocking billows rise and sing
                  On the chafed ocean side?
                                    --William Cullen Bryant

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