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
Sapphic stanza in Polish poetry Sapphic stanza in some poems. Olbrycht Karmanowski, a minor poet, employed it in the poem "O śmierci" ("On Death"). Lenart Gnoiński used Sapphic stanzas in the tenth poem of a sequence named "Łzy smutne" ("Sorrowful Tears"). Daniel Naborowski, a Calvinist poet, employed the Sapphic stanza in "Lament I" from "Laments on Death of Duke Radziwiłł, Castellan of Vilnius". The poem consists of eleven strophes. Jan Andrzej Morsztyn, whose poetry (influenced strongly by Giambattista Marino) is most typical for Baroque, used Sappho's stanza in "Do lutnie" ("To a Lute") from "Lutnia" ("The Lute") and in "Wiejski żywot" ("Life in a Village"