Sidelight: Classical Greek and Latin poetry were based on quantitive verse, while most modern English poetry is a combination of accentual and syllabic versification.

Sidelight: The popular abab quatrain rhyme scheme, as in Wordsworth's "She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways," is sometimes referred to as alternate rhyme or cross rhyme. Its variant, xbyb, is found in folk ballads. For In Memoriam, Tennyson used an abba scheme, often called envelope rhyme. Two other rhyming possibilities are aabb, which can produce an antithetical effect, and monorhymed or near-monorhymed quatrains, of which the aaxa of Fitzgerald's The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, is an example. Sometimes two or more quatrains are interlocked by a chain rhyme, as in the aaba, bbcb, ccdc, dddd of Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."

Sidelight: A curtal quatrain is a quatrain in which the fourth line is shortened.

(See also Cinquain)