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
Of Modern Poetry is ongoing. These non-sentences also stress that the mind must act, not passively wait for inspiration or intuition. And the mind must seek to find "what will suffice." What that says of modern poetry will be addressed metaphorically in the poem, the organizing metaphor being that of a new stage on which the modern poet will perform. The lines of the poem, non-traditional "free verse," do not rhyme and are not metrical. They range from ten syllables to fourteen. One striking thing about the sounds of the poem is that three of the lines have weak endings; that is, the