Sapphic stanza in Polish poetry is a hymn included in "Gorzkie żale" ("Bitter Lamentations"), a typically Polish Catholic devotion, sung in churches on Sundays during Lent, and familiar to many Poles. Neither Adam Mickiewicz nor Juliusz Słowacki used the classic Sapphic stanza. Słowacki, however, employed its general scheme in his own six-line stanza, discussed below. Cyprian Kamil Norwid, a poet regarded as one of the greatest Polish authors and perhaps the most modern of the poets of the 19th century, used Sapphic stanzas in the poem named "Trzy zwrotki" ("Three strophes"), as well as in many other poems including "Sieroctwo" ("Orphanhood"). Sometimes he implemented the
To a Skylark as such." The poem consists of twenty-one stanzas made up of five lines each. The first four lines are metered in trochaic trimeter, the fifth in iambic hexameter, also called Alexandrine. The rhyme scheme of each stanza is ABABB. The poem begins with a description of the skylark high above in the sky. The bird is characterized as a “Spirit”. Its song is described as “unpremeditated art”. The skylark is able to sing while it ascends overhead. Its flight is compared to a “cloud of fire”. It soars across the descending sun like an “unbodied joy”. It flies in the