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
Theory (poem) in the first lines of Canto III, Stanza LXXII of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage": "I live not in myself, but I become / Portion of that around me." Theory (poem) "Theory" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, "Harmonium." It was first published in 1917, so it is in the public domain. Buttel interprets the poem as one of Stevens's attempts to approach the rhythms of prose, as part of a strategic understatement that moves into a poem in an offhand, 'anti-poetic' way. He sees that the instances must carry the strength of the theory, but he says