Often the best poets have chosen the structure of four-stanza poems to express their feelings and soul's concerns. In the following compositions, ranging from the classic sonnet to free structures and short poems, you will find inspiring messages about love and life.
Famous 4-Stanza Poems
Structures like the sonnet and other four-stanza constructions allow for the condensation of various ideas and feelings about love, friendship, and life in a small space. These poems by famous writers will be very inspiring to you.
1. Sonnet XCVII (Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer)
I traveled to the master's legends
to dream beside his rhymes.
I discarded the words you don't value
dirtying his world so sinister.
There are pretentious texts of the skillful
of vulgar languages through the peaks.
With your immortal memory, you encourage me
to rescue your dreams from the abduction.
Because the letters full of emptiness
empty this fullness of my soul
of dreams frozen by the cold
Of this world that erases from the palm
of my hand legends of this river
of your art that rhymed with my calm.
With his favorite format, the sonnet, the great master of the Spanish Golden Age poetry, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, constructs a true homage to poetry as a vehicle for expressing feelings and love.
2. Adonic Angela (Pablo Neruda)
Today I have lain beside a pure young woman
like at the edge of a white ocean,
like in the center of a burning star
of slow space.
From her long green gaze
the light fell like dry water,
in transparent and deep circles
of fresh strength.
Her chest like a fire of two flames
burned in two raised regions,
and in a double river reached her feet,
large and clear.
A golden climate barely ripened
the diurnal lengths of her body
filling it with extended fruits
and hidden fire.
The master of love poetry, Pablo Neruda, pours all the passion and ardor with which he used to envelop words into his verses. In this poetry, he admires the beauty of a young woman comparing her to elements of nature.
3. Four in the Morning (Wislawa Szymborska)
Hour from night to day.
Hour from one side to the other.
Hour for thirty-year-olds.
Hour groomed for the rooster's crow.
Hour when the earth denies our names.
Hour when the wind blows from extinct stars.
Hour and-if-after-us-nothing-remains.
Empty hour.
Deaf, sterile.
Bottom of all hours.
No one feels good at four in the morning.
If ants feel good at four in the morning,
they should be congratulated. And let five come,
if we have to keep living.
The 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature winner visits in this four-stanza poem that moment between dawn and day through which the writer's nostalgia filters, a feeling reinforced with epithets: empty, sterile, deaf.
4. To Die Dreaming (Miguel de Unamuno)
To die dreaming, yes, but if one dreams
of dying, death is a dream; a window
to the void; not to dream; nirvana;
time's end finally takes over eternity.
To live today under the banner
of yesterday dissolving into tomorrow;
to live chained to reluctance
is it perhaps to live? And what does this teach?
To dream of death is not to kill the dream?
To live the dream is not to kill life?
Why put so much effort into it:
to learn what is immediately forgotten
scrutinizing the implacable frown
-desert sky- of the eternal Owner?
The sonnet was also the favorite construction for Miguel de Unamuno, a poet of the Generation of '98, who in this case reveals in the depth of his words his dimension as an intellectual and philosopher: a whole reflection on life and death.
5. The Bison (Jorge Luis Borges)
Mountainous, overwhelmed, indecipherable,
red like the ember that fades,
he walks strong and slow through the vague
solitude of his tireless wasteland.
He raises his armed forehead. In this
ancient bull of dormant anger,
I see the red men of the West
and the lost men of Altamira.
Then I think he ignores human time,
whose spectral mirror is memory.
Time doesn't touch him nor the history
of its course, so variable and vain.
Timeless, innumerable, zero,
he is the last bison and the first.
In this seemingly simple and innocent four-stanza poem, Jorge Luis Borges demonstrates why he is one of the greatest writers of all time, a unique thinker who works magic with words with the bison as a metaphor for time.
6. The Baccarat of the Night (Leopoldo María Panero)
Who deceives me at night, and howls
asking me to go out, to go out into the street and walk,
and run, and cross the streets like a rabid dog
the deserted streets where it is always night,
madly seeking the baccarat in the night?
Who awakens, what mortal woman or bird to tell me
that I still live, that I still desire, that I have
still to imprint a final direction to my eyes
to seek the baccarat of the night?
What nails scratch my old age, and what hand that doesn't forgive
tortures my wrist, leading me
like to a safe place, to the baccarat in the night?
What mother's hand, what prayer do they whisper
moon after moon the lips of the moon
screaming in the middle of the street alone
discovering me on the sidewalk, denouncing to all
my secret testament, my dread and my fear
without rest of finding myself, I don't know if today perhaps,
maybe tomorrow, playing
forever at the baccarat in the night?
Baccarat is a very common card game in casinos. In this poetry, the poet of madness, Leopoldo María Panero, speaks of the voices that lead him to a bad life and glorifies temptation as that which makes him feel alive.
4-Stanza Love Poems
Gabriela Mistral, José Hierro, Miguel Hernández, Mario Benedetti, Ángel González, and Rosalía de Castro each managed to capture, in their own style, the essence of love in the following four-stanza verses. Don't miss them.
7. I Sing What You Loved (Gabriela Mistral)
I sing what you loved, my life,
in case you come near and listen, my life,
in case you remember the world you lived
at dusk I sing, my shadow.
I don't want to fall silent, my life.
How without my faithful cry would you find me?
What sign, what declares me, my life?
I am the same who was yours, my life.
Neither slow nor forgetful nor lost.
Come at dusk, my life;
come remembering a song, my life,
if you recognize the learned song,
and if you still remember my name.
I wait for you without deadline or time.
Don't fear night, fog, or downpour.
Come with a path or without a path.
Call me to where you are, my soul,
and march straight to me, companion.
This call to love is a cry of passion and hope. In four stanzas, the Chilean poetess exudes rapture, illusion, tenderness, and pure love, the nostalgia of lost love and yet blind trust and faith as the last lifeline.
8. Forever (Mario Benedetti)
If the emerald were to dull,
If gold lost its color,
Then, our love would end
Our love.
If the sun didn't warm,
if the moon didn't exist,
then, it wouldn't make sense
to live on this earth
just as it wouldn't make sense
to live without my life,
the woman of my dreams,
the one who gives me joy...
If the world didn't turn,
Or time didn't exist,
then, you would never die
nor would our love...
but time is not necessary
our love is eternal
we don't need the sun
the moon or the stars
to keep loving each other...
If life were different
and death came
then, I would love you
today, tomorrow...
forever...
Still.
Benedetti always manages to reach our hearts with that simple and direct style. In this four-stanza poem, he manages to reflect the power of love beyond being and time, as an eternal and powerful feeling.
9. Walk (José Hierro)
Without tenderness, for between us
without tenderness we understand each other.
Without speaking, for words
unravel the secret.
So many things we have said
when it was not possible to see each other!
So many vulgar things, so many
prosaic things, so many echoes
faded in the years,
in the dark entrails of time!
They are those distant fables
in which we no longer believe.
It is October. It gets dark. A solitary
bench. From it, I see you
eternally young, while
we are dying.
Nineteen thirty-eight.
La Magdalena. Suns. Dreams.
Nineteen thirty-nine,
to start living again!
And then all life.
And the years we will not see.
And these people going to their homes,
to their jobs, to their dreams.
And our very dear friends,
who will not enter the winter.
And everything drowning us, erasing us.
And everything hurting us, breaking us.
Thus I have seen you: without tenderness,
for without them we understand each other.
Thinking of you as you are not,
as only I see you.
Prosaic interlude to
dream of a winter afternoon.
José Hierro overflows this four-stanza poem with tenderness and delicacy, a romantic poetry that, as in all this poet's compositions, mixes love with a touch of nostalgia, sadness, and pain.
10. My Eyes, Without Your Eyes, Are Not Eyes (Miguel Hernández)
My eyes, without your eyes, are not eyes,
they are two solitary anthills,
and my hands without yours are several,
unmanageable thorn in bunches...
I can't find my lips without your reds,
That fill me with sweet belfries,
without you my thoughts are calvaries
Breeding tuberoses and withering fennels.
I don't know what becomes of my ear without your accent,
nor to which pole I err without your star,
and my voice without your touch becomes effeminate.
I pursue the scents of your wind
and the forgotten image of your footprint,
that begins in you, love, and ends in me.
The people's poet displays all his skill for rhyme, harmony, and musicality in this four-stanza love poem. As is common in Miguel Hernández's poetry, the poem is a song to the body and the senses.
11. The Bells (Rosalía de Castro)
I love them, I hear them,
as I hear the sound of the wind,
the murmur of the fountain
or the bleating of the lamb.
Like the birds, they,
as soon as the first ray of dawn
appears in the sky,
greet it with their echoes.
And in their notes, which extend
through the plains and hills,
there is something candid,
peaceful and pleasant.
If they were to fall silent forever,
what sadness in the air and the sky!
What silence in the church!
What strangeness among the dead!
This four-stanza composition clearly shows the traits of romantic poetry, and it is one of the most optimistic of Rosalía de Castro, always wrapped in desolation. In this metaphorical poem, she speaks of the sadness when beautiful things are lost.
12. I Would Like to Be Seaweed, Entangled Seaweed (Ángel González)
I would like to be seaweed, entangled seaweed,
in the softest part of your calf.
Breeze breath against your cheek.
Light sand under your step.
I would like to be water, salty water
when you run naked to the shore.
Sun cutting in shadow your simple
virgin silhouette of freshly bathed.
I would like to be everything, undefined,
around you: landscape, light, environment,
seagull, sky, ship, sail, wind...
Conch that you bring to your ear,
to timidly gather,
with the sound of the sea, my feeling.
In this masterpiece by the Oviedo poet awarded the Prince of Asturias in 1985, Ángel González, shows his artistic sensitivity and technical precision in a seemingly austere but symbolically charged poetry.
13. I Only Wish to Love You (Paul Éluard)
I only wish to love you.
A storm fills the valley,
a single fish the river.
I have made you
to the measure of my solitude,
the whole world to hide,
days and nights to understand each other.
To contemplate in your eyes
everything I think of you
and of a world made in your image
And the nights and days governed by your eyelids.
In few short poems is so much immensity and depth condensed. One of the most prominent intellectuals of French surrealism seems in this case to touch the ground and speak to us of the power of love with overwhelming realism.
Short 4-Stanza Poems
Four stanzas is a perfect measure for a poem: neither too short nor too long. But in the following poems, you will discover playful word games and deep messages in four stanzas of short verses.
14. Written on the Back of Two Postcards (Marguerite Yourcenar)
A siren cries
the departure of a ship
over the water that erases.
I suffer the absence
and the hard space;
the pain is a wall.
The route is a trap:
neither trains, nor ship;
the journey is empty.
..........
Reflection, may your spear
pierce the distance
and strike with sweetness.
(The honey of wounds
embalms love)
One of the most famous writers of all time reveals here her talent and originality, in a poetry full of sensitivity that takes our soul with the gentle breeze that caresses the sea.
15. It's True (Federico García Lorca)
Oh, how hard it is for me
To love you as I love you!
For your love, the air hurts me,
the heart
and the hat.
Who would buy from me
this headband I have
and this sadness of white thread,
to make handkerchiefs?
Oh, how hard it is for me
To love you as I love you!
A mix of surrealism, popular language, and raw emotion, this short four-stanza poem is pure Lorca. The street vendor becomes the lover who lyrically sings his love for his beloved.
16. In the Tree of My Chest (Gloria Fuertes)
In the tree of my chest
there is a red bird.
When I see you, it gets scared,
flutters, jumps.
In the tree of my chest
there is a red bird.
When I see you, it gets scared,
you are a scarecrow!
Gloria Fuertes's poems, the children's poetess, always show that boldness and joy that in this poem she manages to condense in just 8 verses. Few people like her know how to see love in such a pure and innocent way.
17. Since You Are Here (Ryszard Kapuscinski)
Since you are here
everything changes color
has one more hue:
You
Since you are here
the sounds change:
they are full of your voice.
Since you are here
the forests and trees
smell like you.
Since you are here
I touch the world,
a complete world
and unique.
A very original love poem that one of the great writers of our time, Ryszard Kapuscinski, manages to frame in four short verses. It speaks of the power of love to change everything around us.
18. From Yesterday's Corners (José Agustín Goytisolo)
In lost places
Against all hope
I searched for you.
In nameless cities
Through yesterday's corners
I searched for you.
In miserable hours
Among the bitter shadow
I searched for you.
And when discouragement
Asked me to return
I found you.
The structure seems to take on a frenzied rhythm that leads us to an expected but overwhelming end. A poem that is read in just a few seconds and yet leaves us like the protagonist of it: breathless.