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People often classify the quatrains into a category of "innovative classical-form poetry".However, all the quatrains can be grouped into such two categories as "ancient-style quatrains" and "regular quatrains" as a matter of fact in terms of the thyme schemes.According to the book entitled "Notes and Commentaries on Mysteries of Selected Tang Poems", "five-character quatrains are usually considered to be those five-character ancient- style verses which have been cut short" on the grounds that most five-character quatrains belong to ancient-style quatrains.Almost all the seven-character quatrains belong to the category of regular quatrains as a whole.The five- character pieces containing a total of four lines came into being even before the Tang Dynasty, such as the folk-song- styled verses entitled "Songs of Midnight' which caused a sensation during the Northern and Southern Dynasties.The principles of "harmonizing the level tone and obliqu tone" and "the employment of thyme of the characters with a level tone" were not actually put into effect while people wrote such a kind of poetry.The Tang Dynasty poets would like to imitate such a poetic form while they carried out their literary creation.The total number of the characters of every five-character piece containing a total of four lines amounts to twenty at the very outside.Generally speaking, such a kind of short poems would only leave rather limited room to most people who needed to give full play to their skill as poets.