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
Stanza ice-bound, Changed into weeping willows, sweep the ground; Dead boughs take root in ponds And ferns on windows shoot their ghostly fronds. But vainly the fierce frost Interns poor fish, ranks trees in an armed host, Hangs daggers from house-eaves And on the windows ferny ambush weaves; In the long war grown warmer The sun will strike him dead and strip his armour.</poem> Stanza In poetry, a stanza (; from Italian "stanza" , "room") is a grouped set of lines within a poem, usually set off from other stanzas by a blank line or indentation. Stanzas can have regular rhyme