Alexandrine

alexandrine, a verse line of twelve syllables adopted by poets since the 16th century as the standard verse-form of French poetry, especially dramatic and narrative. It was first used in 12th-century *CHANSONS DE GESTE, and probably takes its name from its use in Lambert le Tort's Roman d'Alexandre (c.1200). The division of the line into two groups of six syllables, divided by a * CAESURA, was established in the age of Racine, but later challenged by Victor Hugo and other 19th-century poets, who preferred three groups of four. The English alexandrine is an iambic * HEXAMETER (and thus has six stresses, whereas the French line usually has four), and is found rarely except as the final line in the * SPENSERIAN STANZA, as in Keats's The Eve of St Agnes':

She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint.