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 scheme freely, as in the poem "Buntowniki" ("Rioters"). The second half of the 19th century in Polish literature was dominated by "pozytywizm" (positivism), which was the local Polish version of West-European realism. The two greatest poets of the time were Adam Asnyk and Maria Konopnicka. Their poetry was much influenced by French Parnassianism. Maria Konopnicka published more than twenty poems written in the form. She also used its scheme for constructing more complicated stanzas. Felicjan Faleński attempted a Polish Sapphic stanza more closely resembling the Greek and Latin models, and in translating Horace’s poetry used a hendecasyllable with the caesura