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 the lyric "Preludium" ("Prelude") she employed a seven-line stanza, built in much the same way: 11a/11b/11a/11a/5b/11c/5c. Once again she suggested Sappho's stanzaic pattern in the poem "Posłom wielkopolskim" ("To the deputies from the Greater Poland"), which goes 11a/11b/11a/5b/11c/11c; she repeated this scheme in "Improwizacja" ("Improvisation") and in "Ave, Patria". In the poem "Idź, idź w pokoju!" ("Go away in peace") Konopnicka used a six-line strophe 5a/11b/11b/11c/11c/5a. Another form used by Konopnicka suggestive of the Sapphic stanza is a quatrain composed of three hendecasyllabic lines and one trisyllable, used in "Kto krzywdę płodzi" ("Who begets harm"). More complicated is an eight-line