Metre (poetry) of over some two-and-a-half millennia. Beginning with the earlier recorded forms: the Classic of Poetry tends toward couplets of four-character lines, grouped in rhymed quatrains; and, the Chuci follows this to some extent, but moves toward variations in line length. Han Dynasty poetry tended towards the variable line-length forms of the folk ballads and the Music Bureau yuefu. Jian'an poetry, Six Dynasties poetry, and Tang Dynasty poetry tend towards a poetic metre based on fixed-length lines of five, seven, (or, more rarely six) characters/verbal units tended to predominate, generally in couplet/quatrain-based forms, of various total verse lengths. The Song poetry
Sapphic stanza in Polish poetry longer lines (iambic tetrameters) and two shorter (iambic dimeters): <poem style="margin-left:2em"> But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane, In proving foresight may be vain: The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men Gang aft agley, An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain, For promis’d joy! </poem> Maria Konopnicka used Słowacki's stanza in her well-known poem with the Latin title "Contra spem spero", and in the poems "Do ziemi" ("To the soil") and in "Zima do poety" ("Winter to the poet"). In another poem, "Jej pamięci" ("To her memory"), she employed a very similar strophe, also 11/11/11/5/11/5, but rhymed AABBCC. In