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
Donald Davie's Some Notes on Rhythm in Verse Donald Davie's Some Notes on Rhythm in Verse Some Notes on Rhythm in Verse by Donald Davie first appeared in the "Agenda" poetry journal, in the Autumn / Winter issue 1972–73, and was later collected in his book of essays and interviews, "Trying To Explain." It is a short piece comprising seven numbered paragraphs. He makes a case for scansion being 'a sort of crutch or scaffolding in the act of composition'. The first paragraph states that the boundary between free verse and metred verse is 'smudged'. He writes: "If you shorten an iambic measure to the trimeter, and then