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
Portrait of a Lady (poem) Portrait of a Lady (poem) "Portrait of a Lady" is a poem by American-British poet T. S. Eliot (1888–1965), first published in September 1915 in ". " It was published again in March 1916 in "Others: An Anthology of the New Verse," in February 1917 (without the epigraph) in "The New Poetry: An Anthology," and finally in his 1917 collection of poems, "Prufrock and Other Observations." The poem's title is widely seen to be derived from the novel of the same name by Henry James. The poem's epigraph is a famous quotation from Christopher Marlowe's play "The Jew of Malta":