In Memoriam Stanza
Quick answer: The In Memoriam stanza is an iambic tetrameter quatrain rhymed ABBA, named for Tennyson's In Memoriam A.H.H. See how its envelope rhyme shapes grief.
The In Memoriam stanza is a quatrain of iambic tetrameter rhymed ABBA, named after Tennyson's In Memoriam A.H.H. (1850), the long elegy he wrote across seventeen years for his friend Arthur Hallam. The pattern is called envelope rhyme: the outer lines enclose a couplet, so the stanza opens a sound, seals two others inside it, then returns to close what it began. Ben Jonson had used the shape earlier, but Tennyson's poem made it his.
The form is a masterclass in matching structure to feeling. Because the final rhyme answers a sound last heard three lines back, it lands softened, half remembered, and every stanza ends with a faint dying fall. Critics have long read that fade as the sound of grief itself: each unit of the poem reaches for closure and finds only a quieter echo.
The poem
I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 'In Memoriam A.H.H.' (1850)
How the Envelope Works
In an ABAB quatrain the last rhyme arrives fresh from two lines before and clicks shut. In ABBA the middle couplet gratifies the ear early, then the stanza must travel back to its opening sound. Tetrameter tightens the effect; with only four beats a line, the whole envelope passes in a breath, and a long poem in this stanza becomes a chain of small circlings, apt for a mind revolving the same loss.
Tennyson exploits the shape both ways: sometimes the return rhyme consoles, an arm closing around the couplet, and sometimes it traps, the stanza unable to move past where it started.
Where You Will See It
In Memoriam itself runs to 131 numbered sections in this stanza, containing lines the language has absorbed, including the declaration that it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Before Tennyson, Ben Jonson's elegy beginning 'Though beauty be the mark of praise' used the same envelope. After him, the stanza appears wherever poets want its circling music, and Oscar Wilde chose a close relative for parts of his memorial verse.
How to Use It in Your Own Poems
Reserve the inner couplet for the stanza's emotional centre, the thing grief keeps touching, and let the outer rhymes carry context. Watch your fourth lines: because they close softly, they reward understatement and are ruined by punchlines. A sequence of short sections in this stanza, dated like journal entries, remains one of the most workable structures ever devised for long grief.
What poets can take from this
- Put the stanza's strongest image or admission in the enclosed BB couplet.
- End fourth lines quietly; the envelope's fade rewards restraint.
- Keep to four beats per line so the circling stays quick and obsessive.
- Write a numbered sequence rather than one long poem, as Tennyson did.
- Compare an ABBA stanza with the same lines rearranged ABAB to hear what the envelope does.
Try it yourself
Write three In Memoriam stanzas dated a year apart, same loss, same envelope rhyme scheme, letting what sits inside the BB couplet change as the grief ages.
Questions
What is the difference between the In Memoriam stanza and the elegiac stanza?
The elegiac stanza is pentameter rhymed ABAB; the In Memoriam stanza is tetrameter rhymed ABBA. The first moves with measured alternation, the second circles back on itself, which is why Tennyson's grief poem lives in it.
Did Tennyson invent the ABBA quatrain?
No, Ben Jonson and others used it centuries earlier. Tennyson's In Memoriam made the stanza famous and attached his poem's name to it permanently.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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