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 or Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, was extremely popular and appeared in eighteen editions from 1670 to 1886. It is another example of the Sapphic stanza serving an epic function in Old Polish literature. The Sapphic stanza was also used in Poland during Enlightenment. Poets of the time preferred the Polish alexandrine (7+6) to the hendecasyllable (5+6), but used the latter metre in Italian forms, such as sesta rima and ottava rima, as well as in Sappho's stanza. Sapphic stanzas can be found in Adam Naruszewicz's poetry. He used the form among others in the poem "Pieśń doroczna na dzień ocalenia