Sapphic stanza in Polish poetry the 16th century Jan Kochanowski created a three-line stanza, being just a shortened Sapphic stanza (11/11/5), and used it in his "Psalm 34". Much later Kochanowski's proposal was used by Cyprian Kamil Norwid in his famous poem "Coś ty Atenom zrobił, Sokratesie?" ("What Did You Do to Athens, Socrates?") Juliusz Słowacki, a romantic poet, frequently used a sexain rhyming "a b a b c c", and invented a stanza using this rhyme scheme but suggesting the Sapphic stanza in its metre: 11a/11b/11a/5b/11c/5c. It is also possible that Słowacki was inspired by the well-known Burns stanza which also consists of four
Epic poetry rhyme royal, though in the 16th century the Spenserian stanza and blank verse were also introduced. The French alexandrine is currently the heroic line in French literature, though in earlier periods the decasyllable took precedence. In Polish literature, couplets of Polish alexandrines (syllabic lines of 7+6 syllables) prevail. In Russian, iambic tetrameter verse is the most popular. In Serbian poetry, the decasyllable is the only form employed. Epic poetry An epic poem, epic, epos, or epopee is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily involving a time beyond living memory in which occurred the extraordinary doings of the extraordinary men and women