What is the stanza of a poem or hymn?

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" (distinct from the refrain, or "chorus"). A stanza consists of a grouping of lines, set off by a space, that usually has a set pattern of meter and rhyme. In traditional English-language poems, stanzas can be identified and grouped together because they share a rhyme scheme or a fixed number of lines (as in distich/couplet, tercet, quatrain, cinquain/quintain, sestet). In much modern poetry, stanzas may be arbitrarily presented on the printed page because of publishing conventions that employ such features as white space or punctuation.

Stanzas can be given a specific name depending on their structure and rhyme pattern. List of stanza names according to number of lines:

2-lines = Couplet
3-lines = Tercet
4-lines = Quatrain
5-lines = Quintain
6-lines = Sextain
7-lines = Septet
8-lines = Octave