Decasyllabic quatrain Decasyllabic quatrain Decasyllabic quatrain is a term used for a poetic form in which each stanza consists of four lines of ten syllables each, usually with a rhyme scheme of AABB or ABAB. Examples of the decasyllabic quatrain in heroic couplets appear in some of the earliest texts in the English language, as Geoffrey Chaucer created the heroic couplet and used it in "The Canterbury Tales". The alternating form came to prominence in late 16th-Century English poetry and became fashionable in the 17th Century when it appeared in heroic poems by William Davenant and John Dryden. In the 18th Century
Onegin stanza Onegin stanza Onegin stanza (sometimes "Pushkin sonnet") refers to the verse form popularized (or invented) by the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin through his novel in verse "Eugene Onegin". The work was mostly written in verses of iambic tetrameter with the rhyme scheme , where the lowercase letters represent feminine endings (i.e., with an additional unstressed syllable) and the uppercase representing masculine ending (i.e. stressed on the final syllable). For example, here is the first stanza of "Onegin" as rendered into English by Charles Hepburn Johnston: <poem> </poem> Unlike other traditional forms, such as the Petrarchan sonnet or Shakespearean sonnet, the