Envelope Stanza
Quick answer: An envelope stanza is a quatrain rhyming abba, where the outer rhymes enclose the inner pair. See how the In Memoriam stanza works and how to write one.
An envelope stanza is a four-line stanza rhyming abba, in which the first and last rhymes wrap around the middle pair like an envelope around a letter. The outer lines match each other, the inner lines match each other, and the whole unit closes back on the sound it opened with. The pattern is sometimes called enclosed rhyme, and the most famous version, iambic tetrameter quatrains rhyming abba, is known as the In Memoriam stanza after Tennyson's long elegy of 1850.
The appeal is emotional as much as musical. Because the stanza ends by returning to its first rhyme sound, it feels circular, contained, a thought that folds shut rather than marching forward. That makes it a natural home for grief, memory and meditation, subjects where the mind loops rather than progresses. Poets reach for the envelope when they want each stanza to feel like a sealed compartment of feeling.
How It Works
Read an abba quatrain aloud and you will notice the third rhyme arrives quickly, in adjacent lines, while the fourth makes you wait and then rewards you with a sound from three lines back. Here is an original example: 'The gate still swings the way it did in June, / though no one passes through it any more. / The path has given up on being sure. / The garden hums its one forgetful tune.' The June and tune rhymes enclose the more and sure couplet, and the return of that opening sound gives the stanza its click of closure.
Metre is flexible. Tennyson used tetrameter, whose shorter lines tighten the loop, but envelope quatrains appear in pentameter too, including inside the Petrarchan sonnet, whose octave is two envelope stanzas stacked: abbaabba.
Where You Will See It
Tennyson's In Memoriam A.H.H. is the landmark, a book-length elegy for his friend Arthur Hallam built from hundreds of abba tetrameter quatrains; the circling stanza mirrors grief that keeps returning to the same questions. The octave of every strict Petrarchan sonnet runs on enclosed rhyme, so Milton, Wordsworth and Christina Rossetti all worked inside it. You will also find envelope quatrains scattered through hymnody and through nineteenth-century lyric generally, wherever a poet wanted containment rather than the forward drive of alternating abab rhyme.
How to Use It in Your Own Poems
Choose material that circles: an anniversary, an obsession, a memory you cannot put down. Write your quatrain so the outer lines could almost touch, as if line four answers or undoes line one, with the middle couplet as the pressure between them.
The main hazard is monotony over many stanzas, since every unit closes with the same folded-shut motion. Counter it by varying sentence length across stanzas, letting an occasional sentence run over the stanza break, and saving your strongest image for an outer line, where the enclosing rhyme will frame it. A single well-made envelope stanza also works as a complete short poem, and compact forms like this are good candidates for a monthly contest deadline such as Writory's.
What poets can take from this
- Put your most resonant words in lines one and four, since the enclosing rhyme positions carry the most weight.
- Keep the middle couplet slightly quicker or plainer, so the return of the outer rhyme feels like arrival.
- Test each stanza by asking whether line four genuinely answers, echoes or reverses line one.
- Use tetrameter for a tight, song-like loop and pentameter for a more meditative pace.
- Across a long poem, vary syntax stanza to stanza so the abba pattern soothes rather than lulls.
Try it yourself
Write three envelope stanzas about an object you have kept for more than ten years. In each stanza, let the first line describe the object and the fourth line reveal something about you, joined by rhyme.
Questions
What rhyme scheme is an envelope stanza?
It rhymes abba: the first and fourth lines share one rhyme, the second and third share another. The outer pair encloses the inner pair, which is why it is also called enclosed rhyme.
What is the In Memoriam stanza?
It is the specific envelope stanza Tennyson used in In Memoriam A.H.H.: four lines of iambic tetrameter rhyming abba. The name is now standard shorthand for that exact combination of metre and rhyme.
How is an envelope stanza different from an ordinary quatrain?
A quatrain is any four-line stanza, whatever its rhyme. An envelope stanza is one particular quatrain pattern, abba. Alternating quatrains rhyme abab and push forward; envelope quatrains close back on themselves.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
Enter a Writory poetry contest
Enter the September contest and have your own poem read and scored. That first entry makes you a Writorian.