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
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