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
Verse (poetry) Verse (poetry) In the countable sense, a verse is formally a single metrical line in a poetic composition. However, verse has come to represent any division or grouping of words in a poetic composition, with groupings traditionally having been referred to as stanzas. In the uncountable (mass noun) sense verse refers to "poetry" as contrasted to prose. Where the common unit of verse is based on meter or rhyme, the common unit of prose is purely grammatical, such as a sentence or paragraph. In the second sense verse is also used pejoratively in contrast to poetry to suggest work that