A chieftain's daughter seemed the maid;
Her satin snood, her silken plaid,
Her golden brooch such birth betray'd.
—Scott.
A stanza of four lines is called a quatrain. The lines of quatrains show a variety in the arrangement of their rhymes. The first two lines may rhyme with each other and the last two with each other; the first and fourth may rhyme and the second and third; or the rhymes may alternate. Notice the example on page 208, and also the following:—
1.
I ask not wealth, but power to take
And use the things I have aright.
Not years, but wisdom that shall make
My life a profit and delight.
—Phoebe Cary.
2.
I count this thing to be grandly true:
That a noble deed is a step toward God,—
Lifting the soul from the common sod
To a purer air and a broader view.
—Holland.
A quatrain consisting of iambic pentameter verse with alternate rhymes is called an elegiac stanza.