French alexandrine French alexandrine The French alexandrine () is a syllabic poetic meter of (nominally and typically) 12 syllables with a medial caesura dividing the line into two hemistichs (half-lines) of six syllables each. It was the dominant long line of French poetry from the 17th through the 19th century, and influenced many other European literatures which developed alexandrines of their own. According to verse historian Mikhail Gasparov, the French alexandrine developed from the Ambrosian octosyllable, by gradually losing the final two syllables, then doubling this line in a syllabic context with phrasal stress rather than length as a marker. The earliest
Political verse Political verse Political verse (Greek: "politikós stíkhos", πολιτικός στίχος), also known as decapentasyllabic verse (from Greek: "dekapentasyllabos", δεκαπεντασύλλαβος, lit. '15-syllable'), is a common metric form in Medieval and Modern Greek poetry. It is an iambic verse of fifteen syllables and has been the main meter of traditional popular and folk poetry since the Byzantine period. The name is unrelated to the modern English concept of politics and does not imply political content; rather, it derives from the original meaning of the Greek word πολιτικός, civil or civic, meaning that it was originally a form used for secular poetry, the non-religious