Shairi also known as Rustavelian Quatrain, is a monorhymed quatrain

Quatrain

A quatrain is a stanza, or a complete poem, consisting of four lines of verse. Existing in various forms, the quatrain appears in poems from the poetic traditions of various ancient civilizations including Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, and China; and, continues into the 21st century, where it is...

 used by Shota Rustaveli

Shota Rustaveli

Shota Rustaveli was a Georgian poet of the 12th century, and one of the greatest contributors to Georgian literature. He is author of "The Knight in the Panther's Skin" , the Georgian national epic poem....

 in the Knight in the Panther's Skin

The Knight in the Panther's Skin

The Knight in the Panther's Skin is an epic poem, consisting of over 1600 shairi quatrains, was written in the 12th century by the Georgian epic-poet Shota Rustaveli, who was a Prince and Treasurer at the royal court of Queen Tamar of Georgia. The Knight in the Panther's Skin is often seen as...

.

It consists of four 16-syllable lines, with a caesura

Caesura

thumb|100px|An example of a caesura in modern western music notation.In meter, a caesura is a complete pause in a line of poetry or in a musical composition. The plural form of caesura is caesuras or caesurae...

 between syllables eight and nine. While there are stanza

Stanza

In poetry, a stanza is a unit within a larger poem. In modern poetry, the term is often equivalent with strophe; in popular vocal music, a stanza is typically referred to as a "verse"...

s with as many as five syllables rhyming, generally shairi uses either feminine

Feminine rhyme

A feminine rhyme is a rhyme that matches two or more syllables, usually at the end of respective lines, in which the final syllable or syllables are unstressed.-English:...

 or dactylic

Dactyl (poetry)

A dactyl is a foot in meter in poetry. In quantitative verse, such as Greek or Latin, a dactyl is a long syllable followed by two short syllables, as determined by syllable weight...

 rhyme. It is worth noticing that despite the feminine and dactylic forms of rhyme, in Georgian shairi stress is very weak due to the nature of the Georgian language

Georgian language

Georgian is the native language of the Georgians and the official language of Georgia, a country in the Caucasus.Georgian is the primary language of about 4 million people in Georgia itself, and of another 500,000 abroad...

, which is characterized by dynamic and very weak stress placed on antepenultimate syllable in words longer than two syllables and on penultimate in two syllable words.

Types

Two distinct forms of shairi exist: Magali (high) Shairi and Dabali (low) Shairi. Rustaveli used both types in his poem.

Magali Shairi

In Maghali Shairi, lines are broken into four sections of four syllables, with a caesura after the second section: xxxx xxxx//xxxx xxxx.

Dabali Shairi

In Dabali Shairi, each line is broken into four segments of five and three syllables: xxxxx xxx//xxxxx xxx.

External links

• Shairi: Poetry Base / Poetry Gnosis, A Resource for Learning and Teaching Poetry.