Czech alexandrine Jiří Orten: <poem style="margin-left: 2em; font-style:italic"> </poem> Czech alexandrine Czech alexandrine (in Czech "český alexandrín") is a verse form found in Czech poetry of the 20th century. It is a metre based on French alexandrine. The most important features of the pattern are number of syllables (twelve or thirteen) and a caesura after the sixth syllable. It is an unusual metre, exhibiting characteristics of both syllabic and syllabotonic (accentual-syllabic) metre. Thus it occupies a transitional position between syllabic and accentual patterns of European versification. It stands out from the background of modern Czech versification, which is modeled chiefly after German
Metre (poetry) feet, alliterative verse divided each line into two half-lines. Each half-line had to follow one of five or so patterns, each of which defined a sequence of stressed and unstressed syllables, typically with two stressed syllables per half line. Unlike typical Western poetry, however, the number of unstressed syllables could vary somewhat. For example, the common pattern "DUM-da-DUM-da" could allow between one and five unstressed syllables between the two stresses. The following is a famous example, taken from The Battle of Maldon, a poem written shortly after the date of that battle (AD 991): <poem style="margin-left: 2em"> "Hige sceal þe