Dodecasyllable generally called the "alexandrine", after the French equivalent. Dodecasyllable Dodecasyllable verse () is a line of verse with twelve syllables. 12 syllable lines are used in a variety of poetic traditions. Jacob of Serugh (c. 451 – 29 November 521), a Miaphysite Bishop of Batnan da-Srugh, also called 'Flute of the Spirit' who composed in the dodecasyllabic verse more than seven-hundred verse homilies, or mêmrê (ܡܐܡܖ̈ܐ), of which only 225 have thus far been edited and published. It is also used in Italian and French poetry, and in poetry of the Croats (the most famous example being Marko Marulić). In
Free verse poets such as Gustave Kahn and Jules Laforgue in his "Derniers vers" of 1890. Taupin, the US-based French poet and critic, concluded that free verse and "vers libre" are not synonymous, since "the French language tends to give equal weight to each spoken syllable, whereas English syllables vary in quantity according to whether stressed or unstressed." The sort of cadencing that we now recognize in free verse can be traced back at least as far as the Biblical Hebrew psalmist poetry of the Bible. By referring to the , it is possible to argue that free verse in English first