The form is two hendecasyllabic verses, and a third verse beginning the same way and continuing with five additional syllables. Using "–" for a long syllable, "∪" for a short syllable, and "x" for an "anceps", and displaying the Adonic as a fourth line:
Sappho
While Sappho used several metrical forms for her poetry, she is most famous for the Sapphic stanza. Her poems in this meter ran to 330 stanzas, a significant part of her complete works. It is not clear if she created it or if it was already part of the Aeolic tradition; according to Marius Victorinus, it was invented by Alcaeus but then used more frequently by Sappho, and so is more strongly associated with her. Sappho's most famous poem in this metre is Sappho 31, written in the Aeolic Greek dialect of her home island of Lesbos, which begins as follows:
Other poets
contemporary and countryman, Alcaeus of Mytilene, also used the Sapphic stanza. A few centuries later, the Roman poet Catullus admired Sappho's work and used the Sapphic meter in two poems, Catullus 11 and Catullus 51. The latter is a rough translation of Sappho 31. Sapphics were also used by Horace in several of his Odes, including Ode 1.22: The Sapphic stanza was one of the few classical quantitative meters to survive into the Middle Ages, when accentual rather than quantitative prosody became the norm. Many Latin hymns were written in Sapphic stanzas, including the famous hymn for St John the Baptist which gave the original names of the sol-fa scale: Ut queant laxis resonare fibris/ Mira gestorum famuli tuorum/ Solve polluti labii reatum/ Sancte Joannes
Though some English poets attempted quantitative effects in their verse, quantity is not phonemic in English. So imitations of the Sapphic stanza are typically structured by replacing long with stressed syllables, and short with unstressed syllables. The Sapphic stanza was imitated in English, using a line articulated into three sections as the Greek and Latin would have been, by Algernon Charles Swinburne in a poem he simply called Sapphics: So the goddess fled from her place, with awful Sound of feet and thunder of wings around her; While behind a clamour of singing women
Thomas Hardy chose to open his first verse collection Wessex Poems and other verses 1898 with "The Temporary the All," a poem in Sapphics, perhaps as a declaration of his skill and as an encapsulation of his personal experience. Change and chancefulness in my flowering youthtime, Set me sun by sun near to one unchosen; Wrought us fellowly, and despite divergence,
Rudyard Kipling wrote a tribute to William Shakespeare in Sapphics called "The Craftsman". He hears the line articulated into four, with stresses on syllables 1, 4, 6, and 10. His poem begins: Once, after long-drawn revel at The Mermaid, He to the overbearing Boanerges Jonson, uttered : Such shall the noise be and the wild disorder, Such the dire terror, when the great Archangel Tears the strong pillars of the vault of heaven, Breaks up old marble, the repose of princes; See the graves open, and the bones arising,
Australian Classicist and poet John Lee wrote a Sapphic stanza about the impossibility of writing Sapphic stanzas in English: Making Sapphics isn't that easy, shackling Our reluctant language with trochees. Since you First begot them, songstress of Lesbos, keep them.
. The Australian poet John Tranter has also written a poem in two Sapphic stanzas about the difficulty of writing Sapphics in English: Writing Sapphics well is a tricky business. Lines begin and end with a pair of trochees; in between them dozes a dactyl, rhythm like a drunk asleep at a party. Ancient Greek — the language seemed to be made for Sapphics, not a worry; anyone used to English
The Oxford classicist Armand D'Angour has created mnemonics to illustrate the difference between Sapphics heard as 1) a four-beat line in the three-beat measure, as follows: 1. Four-beat: Conquering Sappho's not an easy business: Masculine ladies cherish independence. Only good music penetrates the souls of 2. Three-beat: Independent metre is overrated: What's the point if nobody knows the dance-form? Wisely, Sappho chose to create a stately
The Sapphic stanza has been very popular in Polish literature since the 16th century. It was used by many poets. Sebastian Klonowic wrote a long poem, Flis, using the form. The formula of 11/11/11/5 syllables was so attractive that it can be found in other forms, among others the Słowacki stanza: 11a/11b/11a/5b/11c/11c. In 1653, Paul Gerhardt used the Sapphic strophe format in the text of his sacred morning song "Lobet den Herren alle, die ihn ehren". Sapphic stanza was often used in poetry of German Humanism and Baroque. It is also used in hymns such as "Herzliebster Jesu" by Johann Heermann.
