A rhopalic verse is a form of restricted poetry in the antiquity. It was noticed that in one hexameter verse, Homer used a sequence of words that consisted of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 syllables. After that some poets tried to write whole poems in this style. The term derives from the Greek word "a club", which gets progressively wider from the handle to the head. The most famous verse of this kindЛитературная энциклопедия терминов и понятий, 2001, (available in pdf format), p. 903 (in Russian) is Oratio by Ausonius, of which these are the first three lines:
Latin text English translationAusonius, full text at Intratext or the Oratio at the Perseus Digital Library. O God, Hope of Eternal Life, Conciliator, if, with chaste entreaties, hoping for pardon, we keep vigil,look kindly on us and grant these prayers. In Russia, an attempt was made by Valery Bryusov, in a 1918 poem, "A Gnome about the Life": Russian text Transliteration English translationValery Bryusov, ГНОМ О ЖИЗНИ, 1918
A similar exercise was invented by the French Oulipo group, called "", 'snowball': a poem in which the first line consists of a single-letter word, the second line is a two-letter word, etc. Variations included adding syllables instead of letters, and some others., Christina Ljungberg, Olga Fischer, . References