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 scheme freely, as in the poem "Buntowniki" ("Rioters"). The second half of the 19th century in Polish literature was dominated by "pozytywizm" (positivism), which was the local Polish version of West-European realism. The two greatest poets of the time were Adam Asnyk and Maria Konopnicka. Their poetry was much influenced by French Parnassianism. Maria Konopnicka published more than twenty poems written in the form. She also used its scheme for constructing more complicated stanzas. Felicjan Faleński attempted a Polish Sapphic stanza more closely resembling the Greek and Latin models, and in translating Horace’s poetry used a hendecasyllable with the caesura