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
A Funeral Rhapsody in Memory of General Bem groups of boys and girls. The poem is especially interesting because of its form. It was written in rhymed hexameter. All the lines are made up of fifteen (7+8) syllables according to the pattern ' x ' x x ' x || ' x x ' x x ' x. The rhapsody opens with a Latin citation of Hannibal Barca: "iusiurandum patri datum usque ad hanc diem ita servavi" Norwid's poem was often used and performed by Zbigniew Herbert and was translated into English by Adam Czerniawski. Mourner's Rhapsody was sung by Czesław Niemen and published in 1970 in Poland