| In Memoriam stanza, a quatrain in iambic tetrameter with a rhyme scheme of abba. |
| It accompanies by an interrogative quatrain on the communication which surrounds us and our capacity of understanding. |
| The quatrain is followed by a couplet forming a refrain, also with four stresses. |
| From Wintering Out through North, Heaney had normally used an unrhymed quatrain with short lines of irregular metre. |
| This makes it difficult to say when a particular quatrain has missed or hits its mark. |
| He therefore instituted a poetical competition in which each monk was to epitomise in a quatrain the essence of Zen. |
