Polish alexandrine

Polish alexandrine (Polish: trzynastozgłoskowiec) is a common metrical line in Polish poetry. It is similar to the French alexandrine. Each line is composed of thirteen syllables with a caesura after the seventh syllable. The main stresses are placed on the sixth and twelfth syllables. Rhymes are feminine.

 1 2     3   4 5   6 7   1 2   3    4  5 6
 o o     o   o o   S x | o o   o    o  S x
Moja wdzięczna Orszulo, bodaj ty mnie była

S=stressed syllable; x=unstressed syllable; o=any syllable.

The Polish alexandrine was introduced in the 15th century. It was borrowed from Latin poetry.^[1] It was widely used by Jan Kochanowski,^[2] the first great Polish poet, as exemplified in the first two lines of his "Lament 13", with a formal paraphrase in English:

The Polish national epic, Pan Tadeusz by Adam Mickiewicz, is written in this measure.^[4] Polish alexandrines replaced hendecasyllables in sonnets: in the 16th century poets like Sebastian Grabowiecki and Mikołaj Sęp-Szarzyński wrote sonnets using 11-syllable metre, but in the 17th century Daniel Naborowski translated one of Petrarch's sonnets using 13-syllable lines:

Adam Mickiewicz composed his famous Crimean Sonnets^[5] in 13-syllable lines:

The Polish alexandrine was used by many translators (among others, Franciszek Ksawery Dmochowski) as an equivalent of ancient Greek and Roman dactylic hexameter:

As Polish words are longer than English ones, the 13-syllable line is good for translating English iambic pentameter.

Nowadays Polish alexandrine lines are often mixed with hendecasyllable ones in one poem.^[7]