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
Political verse as ivy-leaves around the ruin'd turret wreathe, All green and wildly fresh without, but worn and gray beneath. </poem> But in the English poetry the lines have mostly masculine rhyme whereas in Greek poetry the fifteen syllable feminine line is the norm of the Political verse. The Political verse characterizes traditional Greek poetry, especially between 1100 and 1850. It is the verse in which most Greek folk songs are written, including such temporally distant works as the medieval Cretan romance "Erotokritos" and the 3rd draft of Dionysios Solomos' ""The Free Besieged"", considered the masterpiece of modern Greek poetry. It is