IV. The Quatrain - In Memorium Stanza

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IV. The Quatrain

In Memoriam Stanza is a stanzaic form, specifically quatrains "suitable for successive, but independent quatrains of philosophical observations neatly placed in its own envelope" NPE0PP, patterned after Tennyson's In Memorium.

The elements of the In Memoriam Stanza are:

1. narrative verse,
2. stanzaic, written in any number of quatrains,
3. metered, iambic tetrameter.
4. rhymed with envelope rhyme scheme abba cddc etc.
   
   Here is just a portion of this classic poem written after the death of Tennyson's friend Arthur Henry Hallam.  The poem has a prologue, 131 stanzas and an epilogue.

   In Memorium; To Sleep and give my powers away; by Alfred Lord Tennyson(1809-1892)

   To Sleep I give my powers away;
   My will is bondsman to the dark;
   I sit within a helmless bark,
   And with my heart I muse and say:
   
   O heart, how fares it with thee now,
   That thou should fail from thy desire,
   Who scarcely darest to inquire,
   "What is it makes me beat so low?"
   
   Something it is which thou hast lost,
   Some pleasure from thine early years.
   Break thou deep vase of chilling tears,
   That grief hath shaken into frost!
   
   Such clouds of nameless trouble cross
   All night below the darkened eyes;
   With morning wakes the will, and cries,
   "Thou shalt not be the fool of loss."