Quatrain
Chinese poetic style. Also known as truncated sentences, broken sentences, and absolute poems. Each poem has four sentences, usually with five or seven characters. They are referred to as Five Absolutes, Seven Absolutes, and occasionally Six Absolutes. It originated from the ballads of Han, Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties. The name "quatrains" probably originated in the Southern Dynasties. During the Liang and Chen Dynasties, quatrains were more commonly used to refer to four-line short poems, and their rhymes were both flat and oblique, or they were called ancient quatrains. Modern quatrains became popular after the Tang Dynasty, and their rhythm is the same as the first, last or middle four lines of the eight-line rhymed poem. Therefore, some people in the Tang Dynasty attributed quatrains to rhymed poetry in their collections of poems. Later, some scholars believed that quatrains were cut into half of the verses. Quatrains are flexible and light, suitable for expressing fleeting thoughts and feelings. They are widely used by poets, and their creations are more prosperous than other types of poetry. In the Song Dynasty, Hong Mai compiled ten thousand quatrains from the Tang Dynasty, accounting for about 1/5 of the total number of existing Tang poems. In addition to Li Bai, Wang Changling, Du Mu, and Li Shangyin who are good at quatrains, there are also many famous poems through the ages, not necessarily written by famous writers. In addition, most of the quatrains in the Tang Dynasty are sung with music, such as Wang Wei's "Weicheng Song", Li Bai's "Qingping Diao", Liu Yuxi and Bai Juyi's "Bamboo Branch Ci", "Yangliu Branch", etc. Therefore, quatrains are also regarded as Tang Dynasty music.
Reference material: Reprinted from "Datang Database"