Alexandrine introduce phrasal accentuation, or rigorously observe the medial caesura, as in French." Common usage within the literatures of European languages is broader still, embracing lines syllabic, accentual-syllabic, and (inevitably) stationed ambivalently between the two; lines of 12, 13, or even 14 syllables; lines with obligatory, predominant, and optional caesurae. Although alexandrines occurred in French verse as early as the 12th century, they were slightly looser rhythmically, and vied with the "décasyllabe" and "octosyllabe" for cultural prominence and use in various genres. "The alexandrine came into its own in the middle of the sixteenth century with the poets of the Pléiade
Blank verse "The Watershed" and John Betjeman's "Summoned by Bells". A complete listing is impossible, since a sort of loose blank verse has become a staple of lyric poetry, but it would be safe to say that blank verse is as prominent now as it has been any time in the past three hundred years. The largest English poems as "The Fall of Nineveh" by Edwin Atherstone and "King Alfred" by John Fitchett are written in blank verse. In Germany blank verse was used by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in the tragedy "Nathan der Weise" ("Nathan the Wise"): Lines are 10 syllables long