Decasyllabic quatrain "prosy". While Ward respects Dryden's willingness to use a new form despite his mastery of the heroic couplet, he believes that "Annus Mirabilis" exemplifies the weaknesses of the form and hinders Dryden's ability to use poetry to fully express his philosophical conceits. Saintsbury, agreeing with this assessment, suggested that Dryden's choice to revert to the heroic couplet for his three poems on the restoration. 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
Burns stanza lyrical, subsequent uses have tended to be comic and satirical, as this passage from Burns shows: A variation on the Burns stanza employs the rhyme scheme AABCCCB, with foreshortened third and seventh lines. This form is deployed, for example, in W. H. Auden's poem "Brother, who when the sirens roar" (also known as "A Communist to Others"): Brothers, who when the sirens roar From office, shop and factory pour By cops directed to the fug Of talkie-houses for a drug, Or down canals to find a hug Auden uses similar verse forms in other poems in the collection "Look, Stranger!"