Decasyllable

Decasyllable (Italian: decasillabo, French: décasyllabe, Serbian: "десетерац","deseterac" ) is a poetic meter of ten syllables used in poetic traditions of syllabic verse. In languages with a stress accent (accentual verse), it is the equivalent of pentameter with iambs or trochees (particularly iambic pentameter).

Decasyllable was used in epic poetry of the Southern Slavs , for example Serbian epic poetry sung to the gusle instrument:

Боже мили! Чуда великога!
Кад се ћаше по земљи Србији,
По Србији земљи да преврне
И да друга постане судија.

It has also been used as the basic structure for several poetic forms in the English language including the Decasyllabic quatrain as well as in many English sonnets.

In Polish a syllabic verse line of 10 syllables can be divided by caesura into 4+6 (as in Serbian) or 5+5. The latter form was very popular at the end of 18th century. It was used in the Stanislaus stanza: 10(5+5)/8/10(5+5)/8. The name of the form refers to the reign of Stanisław August Poniatowski, the last king of independent Poland, when the stanza occurred very often. The longer lines have four accents and the shorter ones usually only three.Adam Mickiewicz wrote some of his ballads using the strophe:

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