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
Anisometric verse Anisometric verse Anisometric verse, known also as heterometric stanza, is a type of poetry where the stanza is made up of lines having unequal metrical length. The number of syllables within the individual lines do not correspond, nor do the number of feet. In poetry, a foot is a group of syllables where one of the syllables is accented or stressed more than the others. Traditionally, poetry uses isometric stanza, each line having the same number of syllables and the same number of feet. Before the 20th century, anisometric verse was rarely seen. Two exceptions are William Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations