Sapphic stanza in Polish poetry Sapphic ones. Only the last one is made up of four hendecasyllabic lines. All strophes rhyme ABAB. The Sapphic stanza is still used in translations form Sappho's or Horace's poems. The scheme of Sapphic stanza is so recognizable, that it can be preserved even in free verse. Lucylla Pszczołowska points out that Czesław Miłosz sometimes composed four-line stanzas with last line of five syllables and other lines of different length. The Sapphic stanza's scheme was so attractive to Polish poets that they started to modify it, and many stanzas based on it can be found in Polish literature. Already in
Sapphic stanza used several metrical forms for her poetry, she is most famous for the Sapphic stanza. Her poems in this meter (collected in Book I of the ancient edition) ran to 330 stanzas, a significant part of her complete works (and of her surviving poetry: fragments 1-42). It is not clear if she created it or if it was already part of the Aeolic tradition; according to Marius Victorinus ("Ars grammatica" 6.161 Keil), it was invented by Alcaeus but then used more frequently by Sappho, and so is more strongly associated with her. Sappho's most famous poem in this metre is