arrangement of billiard balls in ten-ball pool a Chinese checkers board the "Christmas Tree" formation in association football In poetry In English-language poetry, a tetractys is a syllable-counting form with five lines. The first line has one syllable, the second has two syllables, the third line has three syllables, the fourth line has four syllables, and the fifth line has ten syllables. A sample tetractys would look like this: Mantrum Your / fury / confuses / us all greatly. / Volatile, big-bodied tots are selfish. // The tetractys was created by Ray Stebbing, who said the following about his newly created form: "The tetractys could be Britain's answer to the haiku. Its challenge is to express a complete thought, profound or comic, witty or wise, within the narrow compass of twenty syllables. See also Pascal's triangle References Further reading von Franz, Marie-Louise. Number and Time: Reflections Leading Towards a Unification of Psychology and Physics. Rider & Company, London, 1974. Fideler, D. ed. The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library. Phanes Press, 1987. The Theoretic Arithmetic of the Pythagoreans – Thomas Taylor External links Examples of Tetractys poems Dot patterns Genres of poetry Greek mathematics History of mathematics History of poetry Kabbalah Mathematical symbols Poetic forms Pythagorean symbols Pythagoreanism Tarotology Concepts in ancient Greek metaphysics