Meter & Rhythm
Sapphic Meter
Named for Sappho of Lesbos (c.600 BC), who composed her odes in this metre. Catullus and Horace adopted it in Latin; it was an ambitious challenge for English prosodists.
Definition
A classical stanza of three eleven-syllable Sapphic lines followed by a shorter five-syllable Adonic line.
Example
Swinburne's 'Sapphics' (1865); Tennyson's 'Milton' — both recreate the Greek metre in English stress patterns.