POETRY

Rhyme

In poetry, a pattern of repeated sounds. In end rhyme (end-stopping), the rhyme is at the
end of the line, as in these lines from Ars Poetica by Archibald MacLeish:

A poem should be palpable and mute

As a globed fruit
Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb

The following lines from Romeo and Juliet are example of end-stopping:

A glooming peace this morning with it brings.

The sun for sorrow will not show his head.
Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things.
Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished.

In contrast, enjambment is the continuation of a sentence or clause over a line-break, a

way of creating audible interest. The term is directly borrowed from the French
enjambement, meaning "straddling" or "bestriding". Here are a few lines from Keats'
Endymion (a poem in iambic pentameter rhyming couplets) which demonstrate how
enjambment works:

A thing of beauty is a joy forever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and asleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.(ll .1-5)

The first and last lines above are end-stopped; lines 2, 3 and 4 are enjambed.

Internal rhyme, or middle rhyme, is rhyme which occurs in a single line of verse:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door —
Only this, and nothing more. The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

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 Eye rhyme is a form of rhyme wherein the look rather than the sound is important.
"Cough" and "tough" do not sound enough alike to constitute a rhyme. However, if these
two words appeared at the ends of successive lines of poetry, they would be considered
eye rhyme.
Half rhyme occurs when the final consonants rhyme, but the vowel sounds do not (chill-
Tulle; Day-Eternity).

A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhyming lines in a poem. It is usually referred to by

using letters to indicate which lines rhyme. For example abab indicates a four-line stanza
in which the first and third lines rhyme, as do the second and fourth. Here is an example
of this rhyme scheme from To Anthea, Who May Command Him Any Thing by Robert
Herrick:

Bid me to weep, and I will weep,

While I have eyes to see;
And having none, yet I will keep
A heart to weep for thee.

This type of rhyme is called alternating rhyme.

Some rhyme schemes:

 Couplet: "A,A", but usually occurs as "A,A, B,B C,C D,D ...".
 Paired rhyme : “aabb”
 Enclosed rhyme (or enclosing or interlocking rhyme): "abba".
 Limerick: "aabba".
 Monorhyme: "A,A,A,A,A...", an identical rhyme on every line, common in Latin
and Arabic
 Ottava rima: "A,B,A,B,A,B,C,C".
 Rhyme royal: "ababbcc".
 Scottish stanza: "AAABAB", as used by Robert Burns in works such as To a
Mouse
 Sonnet
o Petrarchan sonnet: "abba abba cde cde" or "abba abba cdc dcd".
o Shakespearean sonnet: "abab cdcd efef gg".
o Spenserian sonnet: "abab bcbc cdcd ee".
 Spenserian stanza: "ababbcbcc".
 Terza rima: "aba bcb cdc…”

A feminine rhyme is a rhyme that matches two or more syllables, usually at the end of
respective lines. William Shakespeare's Sonnet number 20, uniquely among the sonnets,
makes use exclusively of feminine rhymes:

A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted,

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Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;
A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women’s fashion...
But since she prick’d thee out for women’s pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure.

A two-syllable feminine rhyme, as in regal/eagle or ended/blended.is called double

rhyme.

A masculine rhyme is a rhyme on a single stressed syllable at the end of a line of poetry.
In English-language poetry, especially serious verse, masculine rhymes comprise a
majority of all rhymes. John Donne's poem "Lecture Upon the Shadow" is one of many
that utilise exclusively masculine rhyme:

Stand still, and I will read to thee

A lecture, love, in Love's philosophy.
These three hours that we have spent
Walking here, two shadows went
Along with us, which we ourselves produced.
But now the sun is just above our head,
We do those shadows tread,
And to brave clearness all things are reduced.

Rhythm
Recurrences of stressed and unstressed syllables at equal intervals, similar to meter.
However, though two lines may be of the same meter, the rhythms of the lines may be
different. For example, if one were to read the last two lines of Robert Frost's, Stopping
by Woods on a Snowy Evening with equal speed, the lines would be the same in meter
and rhythm. However, if one were to read the last line more slowly (as it should be read),
the meter would be the same but the rhythm different. This is because while the meter of
a line is identified by the pattern within each foot, the rhythm is accounted for by larger
units than individual feet.

Ballad
A story in poetic form containig a refrain, often about tragic love and usually sung.
Ballads were passed down from generation to generation by singers. The Child Ballads,
collected by Francis James Child in the late 19th century, is the most comprehensive
collection of ballads in English. It consists of 305 ballads from England and Scotland
(including many traditional ballads such as Ballad of Chevy Chase, John Barleycorn,
Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer), and their American variants. Coleridge’s The Rime of
the Ancient Mariner and Keats’ La Belle Dame Sans Merci are famous 19th century
English ballads.

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A particularly English form, the ballad opera, has as its most famous example John
Gay's The Beggar's Opera, which inspired the 20th-century cabaret operas of Bertolt
Brecht and Kurt Weill.

Blank Verse
A poem written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. Consider the following from "The Ball
Poem" by John Berryman:
What is the boy now, who has lost his ball,What, what is he to do? I saw
it goMerrily bouncing, down the street, and thenMerrily over-there it is in
the water!

Caesura
A pause within a line of poetry which may or may not affect the metrical count (see #62.
meter). In scansion, a caesura is usually indicated by the following symbol (//). Here's an
example by Alexander Pope:
Know then thyself,//presume not God to scan;
The proper study of Mankind//is Man

Canto
A subdivision of an epic poem. Each of the three books of Dante Alighieri's "Divine
Comedy" is divided into cantos. For example, in each of the cantos of "The Inferno,"
Dante meets the souls of people who were once alive and who have been condemned to
punishment for sin.

Concrete Poetry
A poem that visually resembles something found in the physical world. A poem about a
wormy apple written so that the words form the shape of an apple, as in the following, is
an example.

Couplet
A stanza of two lines, usually rhyming. The following by Andrew Marvell is an example
of a rhymed couplet:
Had we but world enough and time,

This coyness, lady,were no crime.

A rhymed pair of lines of iambic pentameter make a heroic couplet. The most famous
writers of heroic couplets are Dryden and Pope.The following lines from The Rape of the
Lock by A. Pope are an example:

On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore

Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore.

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Dactyl
In poetry, a metrical pattern consisting of one stressed syllable followed by two
unstressed syllables as in the following example from The Charge of the Light Brigade
by Alfred Lord Tennyson:
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Anapest
An anapaest or anapest, also called antidactylus, is a metrical foot used in formal
poetry. In classical quantitative meters it consists of two short syllables followed by a
long one (as in a-na-paest); in accentual stress meters it consists of two unstressed
syllables followed by one stressed syllable. It may be seen as a reversed dactyl. This
word comes from the Greek ανάπαιστος, anápaistos, literally "struck back" (a dactyl
reversed), from 'ana-' + '-paistos', verbal of παίειν, paíein: to strike.

Here is an example from William Cowper's "Verses Supposed to be Written by

Alexander Selkirk" (1782), composed in anapaestic trimeter:

I am out of humanity's reach

I must finish my journey alone

Because of its length and the fact that it ends with a stressed syllable and so allows for
strong rhymes, anapaest can produce a very rolling, galloping feeling verse, and allows
for long lines with a great deal of internal complexity. The following is from Byron's The
Destruction of Sennacherib:

The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold

And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Dramatic Monologue
In literature, the occurrence of a single speaker saying something to a silent audience.
Robert Browning's My Last Duchess is an example wherein the duke, speaking to a non-
responding representative of the family of a prospective new duchess, reveals not only
the reasons for his disapproval of the behavior of his former duchess, but aspects of his
own personality as well.

Elegy
A lyric poem lamenting death.

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Epic
In literature generally, a major work dealing with an important theme. "Gone with the
Wind," a film set in the antebellum (pre-Civil War) and Civil War South, is considered an
epic motion picture. In poetry, a long work dealing with the actions of gods and heroes.
John Milton's "Paradise Lost" is a book length epic poem consisting of twelve
subdivisions called books. Homer's "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" are epic poems, the
former concerning the Greek invasion of Troy; the latter dealing with the Greek victory
over the Trojans and the ten-year journey of Odysseus to reach his island home.

Foot
The basic unit of measurement in a line of poetry. In scansion, a foot represents one
instance of a metrical pattern and is shown either between or to the right or left of vertical
lines, as in the following:

The meter in a poem is classified according both to its pattern and the number of feet to
the line. Below is a list of classifications:
monometer = one foot to a line
Dimeter = two feet to a line
Trimeter = three feet to a line
Tetrameter = four feet to a line
Pentameter = five feet to a line
Since the line above is written in iambic meter, four feet to the line, the line would be
referred to as iambic tetrameter.

Another important meter in English is the ballad meter, also called the "common meter",
which is a four line stanza, with two pairs of a line of iambic tetrameter followed by a
line of iambic trimeter; the rhymes usually fall on the lines of trimeter, although in many
instances the tetrameter also rhymes. This is the meter of most of the Border and Scots or
English ballads. In hymnody it is called the "common meter", as it is the most common of
the named hymn meters used to pair many hymn lyrics with melodies, such as Amazing
Grace:

Amazing Grace! how sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me;
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.

Emily Dickinson is famous for her frequent use of ballad meter:

Great streets of silence led away

To neighborhoods of pause;
Here was no notice — no dissent —
No universe — no laws.

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Free Verse
Unrhymed Poetry with lines of varying lengths, and containing no specific metrical
pattern. The poetry of Walt Whitman provides us with many examples. Consider the
following lines from Song of Myself:

I celebrate myself and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loaf and invite my soul,

I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

Iamb
A metrical pattern of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable.

Imagery
A word or grougroup of words in a literary work which appeal to one or more of the
senses: sight, taste, touch, hearing, and smell. The use of images serves to intensify the
impact of the work. The followinample of imagery in T. S. Eliot's The Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock:

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table.
uses images of pain and sickness to describe the evening, which as an image itself
represents society and the psychology of Prufrock, himself.

Lyric Poem
A short poem wherein the poet expresses an emotion or illuminates some life principle.
Emily Dickinson's I Heard a Fly Buzz-When I Died is a lyric poem wherein the speaker,
on a deathbed expecting death to appear in all its grandeur, encounters a common
housefly instead.

Narrative Poem
A poem which tells a story. Usually a long poem, sometimes even book length, the
narrative may take the form of a plotless dialogue as in Robert Frost's "The Death of the
Hired Man." In other instances the narrative may consist of a series of incidents, as in
Homer's "The Ilaid" and "The Odyssey," John Milton's "Paradise Lost."

Ode
A poem in praise of something divine or expressing some noble idea. In' "Ode on a
Grecian Urn," English poet John Keats expresses his appreciation of the beauty and

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agelessness of a work by a Grecian artisan:

Thou still unravished bride of quietness,

Thou foster child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

Quatrain
A four-line stanza which may be rhymed or unrhymed. A heroic quatrain is a four line
stanza rhymed abab. John Donne's "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning" is a poem of
nine heroic quatrains: The following is the first stanza of the poem:

As virtuous men pass mildly away

And whisper to their souls, to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
The breath goes now, and some say, no:

Sonnet
A lyric poem of fourteen lines whose ryhme scheme is fixed. The rhyme scheme in the
Italian form as typified in the sonnets of Petrarch is abbaabba cdecde. The Petrarchian
sonnet has two divisions: the first is of eight lines (the octave), and the second is of six
lines (the sestet). The rhyme scheme of the English, or Shakespearean sonnet is abab
cdcd efef gg. The change of rhyme in the English sonnet is coincidental with a change of
theme in the poem. The meter is iambic pentameter.

Spondee
A metrical pattern characterized by two or more successively-placed accented syllables.
In the following example from Shakespeare's "Othello," Othello's sleep has been
disturbed by a fight. He angrily demands to know who started the fight that disturbed
him. Not receiving an immediate answer he says:

This is the first instance in the play where Othello shows that he can be ruled by his
emotions. The spondee in the first three feet (followed by an iamb in the remaining feet)
reminds the reader of a bowstring being drawn back before the arrow flies, or of a bull
pawing the ground before charging. This is the use of literary devices: to draw the
reader's attention to some noteworthy phenomenon within the literary work, either to
illuminate or to intensify.

In poetry, a spondee is a metrical foot consisting of two long syllables, as determined by

syllable weight in classical meters, or two stressed syllables, as determined by stress in
modern meters. This makes it somewhat unique in English verse as most other feet

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contain at least one unstressed syllable. The word comes from the Greek σπονδή, spondē,
"libation".

It is unrealistic to construct a whole, serious poem with spondees. Consequently,

spondees mainly occur as variants within, say, an anapaestic structure.

For example (from G. K. Chesterton, "Lepanto"):

White founts falling in the courts of the sun

And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;

This whole verse is rather unusual in structure, making it a somewhat difficult example.
The following is a possible analysis, and shows the role of the spondee.

1. The basic template for both lines is anapaestic tetrameter: four feet, each
consisting of two short syllables then a long syllable (duh-duh-DAH, duh-duh-
DAH, duh-duh-DAH, duh-duh-DAH). It is then heavily modified:
2. The second, third and fourth feet in the second line each have three instead of two
short syllables (duh-duh-duh-DAH).
3. The first anapaest in the first line is replaced with a spondee ("White founts,"
DAH-DAH)
4. The second anapaest in the first line is replaced with a trochee (DAH-duh).

A simpler version of the first line might be:

There are white fountains falling in the courts of the sun .

Two short syllables are added at the beginning, and "founts" is lengthened to "fountains."
These extra syllables add "filler," so that when the poem is read stress no longer naturally
falls on the syllable "fount" (or, does so to a lesser degree). As a result there are
unstressed syllables just before the "fall," so that naturally becomes an anapaest
("fountains fall-," duh-duh-DAH), and the "ing" slips into the following anapaest.
Chesterton's version changes all this; it is less intuitive to write and has a more unusual
sound. The spondee effects this.

Tennyson often made use of spondaic and pyrrhic substitutions in his work. Here are
some examples:

This is my son, mine own Telemachus

To whom I leave the scepter and the isle,
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
-from Ulysses

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Spondees above are "Well-loved," "This la-," "slow pru-," and "make mild."

Stanza
A major subdivision in a poem. A stanza of two lines is called a couplet; a stanza of three
lines is called a tercet; a stanza of four lines is called a quatrain, of five lines - quintain
6-lines = Sextain 7-lines = Septet 8-lines = Octave.

Trochee
A metrical pattern in a line of poetry characterized by one stressed syllable followed by
one unstressed syllable. The opening line to Vachel Lindsay's "General William Booth
Enters into Heaven" provides an example:

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