The English sonnet has three quatrains followed by a rhyming couplet.

这首英文十四行诗有三首四行诗，后面跟着一首押韵对句诗。

" It would be difficult to squeeze that into a quatrain" .

“很难将其压缩成绝句”。

More famously known as Nostradamus, he published his predictions as cryptic poems called quatrains.

更广为人知名字是诺查丹玛斯，他将自己以秘诗形式发表，称为绝句。

Skeptics believe that these quatrains were the equivalent of modern-day horoscopes, which were vague enough to fit many situations.

怀疑论者认为，这些绝句等同于代占星术，它们足够模糊以适应许多情况。

Describing them using his usual cryptic quatrains, Nostradamus supposedly predicted Napoleon, Hitler, and a third antichrist who is yet to come.

诺查丹玛斯他惯秘绝句描述他们，据说了拿破仑、希特勒和第三个敌基督者尚未到来。

(That is perhaps a painful fact, but then, you know, we cannot reform our forefathers.) During the first and second quatrain, sung decidedly forte, no can was filled.

（这也许是一个痛苦事实， 但是，你知道，我们不能改革我们祖先。）在第一和第二绝句中， 唱得非常有力， 没有罐子装满。

Some will perhaps think that they detect in the first quatrain an indication of a lost line, which later rhapsodists, failing in imaginative vigour, have supplied by the feeble device of iteration.

有些人可能会认为，他们在第一句四行诗中发了一句丢失台词迹象，后来狂想曲家由于缺乏想象力，只能通过重复微弱装置来补充。

" One or two. I didn't think half as much of Newman as I do now, and I thought a great deal more of the tinkling quatrains of Fitzgerald. I could not read Goethe's Wilhelm Meister; now I think it his masterpiece" .

" 也有过一两次。 我过去对纽曼作品看法远不如在，而对菲茨杰拉德那读起来音韵铿锵四行诗则比在看法要好得多。 那时候，我对歌德《威廉·迈斯特》简直读不下去，而在我觉得这是他杰作。"