Sapphic stanza in Polish poetry for Renaissance poets. Horace's Sapphic stanza comprised three "lesser sapphics" and an "adonic": In Polish there was no quantitative verse, as phonemic quantity itself was extinct. Nor was there accentual-syllabic versification, save some attempts by Jan Kochanowski. But Polish syllabic lines were available. A syllabic hendecasyllable 11(5+6) took the place of the quantitative lesser sapphic; likewise with the adonic. The hendecasyllable (with caesura after the fifth syllable) is very common in Polish poetry, and the pentasyllable is so typical for Polish verse that Karol Wiktor Zawodziński gave it the name of "polonik". Pentasyllables occur in Polish poetry either in a
Sapphic stanza in Polish poetry to Greek and Roman literature as a model. Jan Kochanowski, the most prominent of a family of poets, wrote lyrical poems, often in imitation of Horace. The classic Polish Sapphic stanza was thus 11(5+6) / 11(5+6) / 11(5+6) / 5, typically rhymed "a a b b". Jan Kochanowski used this Sapphic stanza several times in his "Cantos", "Laments", and "Psalms". An excellent example is "Lament XVI". Mikołaj Sęp-Szarzyński, who was the author of "Rymy, abo wiersze polskie" ("The rhymes or Polish poems") and Sebastian Grabowiecki, who was the author of "Setnik rymów duchownych" ("Spiritual Rhymes") also used Sapphic stanzas in