• Alternating rhyme quatrain is a 4 line unit with alternating abab cdcd rhyme which changes from stanza to stanza. These are often found in sequence within an octave. (eg. an octave made up of 2 alternating rhymed quatrains would have a rhyme scheme of ababcdcd vs an an octave with alternating rhyme abababab).
Line length and meter at the discretion of the poet.
To a Waterfowl by William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)
Whither, midst falling dew,
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue
Thy solitary way?
Vainly the fowler’s eye
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong
As, darkly seen against the crimson sky,
Thy figure floats along.
Seek’st thou the plashy brink
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sing
On the chafed ocean side?
There is a Power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast–
The desert and illimitable air–
Lone wandering, but not lost.
All day thy wings have fanned,
At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere,
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
Though the dark night is near.
And soon that toil shall end;
Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,
And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend,
Soon, o’er thy sheltered nest.
Thou’rt gone, the abyss of heaven
Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart
Deeply has sunk the lesson thou hast given,
And shall not soon depart.
He who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.
Pasted from http://www.poetrymagnumopus.com/index.php?showtopic=1007#alternating
My thanks to Judi Van Gorder for years of work on this fine PMO resource.
This is a very flexible form, I used it for a brevity contest below.
My example
Toadstool Time
Toadstools I see
with polkadots.
or could they be
mushrooms with spots?
Noddy might know,
but he won’t say.
Come join him though,
it’s fun to play!
© Lawrencealot – November 10, 2014
Credit art work “Noddy and Big-ears” “borrowed from Google”