Also 6 quadrain, -rein(e, -reyne, 7 -ren, -rin, -ran. [a. F. quatrain, † quadrain (Cotgr.), f. quatre four.]
1. A stanza of four lines, usually with alternate rhymes; four lines of verse.
α. 1585. Jas. I., Ess. Poesie (Arb.), 13. Ane qvadrain of Alexandrin verse.
1589. Puttenham, Eng. Poesie, II. ii. (Arb.), 81. It is not a huitane or a staffe of eight, but two quadreins.
1611. Florio, Quartetto,… a quadren of a Sonnet, or staffe of foure verses.
1651. Delaune (title), A Legacie to his Sonnes. Digested into Quadrins.
β. 1666. Dryden, Pref. Ann. Mirab. I have chosen to write my Poem in Quatrains or Stanza’s of four in alternate rhyme.
1683. Temple, Mem., Wks. 1731, I. 478. A Quatrain recited out of Nostredamus.
1823. Roscoe, trans. Sismondi’s Lit. Eur. (1846), I. iv. 102. The beautiful stanza of ten lines, in one quatrain and two tercets.
1856. R. A. Vaughan, Mystics (1860), II. 7. There are many terse and happy couplets and quatrains in the Wanderer.
b. A set of four persons. nonce-use.
1862. S. Lucas, Secularia, 289. There were four English men of letters … of this stately quatrain Swift and Dryden are the only two he has encountered in his history.
2. = QUARTERN 5. rare–1.
1819. Southey, Lett. (1856), III. 120. Did I send you the opening of ‘Oliver Newman,’ in a small square size … or in half quatrain form?
