Verse Definition | What is Verse? - PoetrySoup

[n] unrhymed verse (usually in iambic pentameter)

A type of poetry, distinguished by having a regular meter, but no rhyme. In English, the meter most commonly used with blank verse has been iambic pentameter. The iambic pentameter form often resembles the rhythms of speech. Verse that does not employ a rhyme scheme. Blank verse, however, is not the same as free verse because it employs a meter e.g. Paradise Lost by John Milton which is written in iambic pentameters.

Example

You stars that reign'd at my nativity,
Whose influence hath alloted death and hell,
Now draw up Faustus like a foggy mist
Into the entrails of yon labouring clouds,
That when they vomit forth into the air,
My limbs may issue from their smoky mouths,
So that my soul may but ascend to Heaven.

See Also...

poem, verse form

A poem containing stanzas of 5 lines, then 4 lines, then 3 lines, then 2 lines, ending with one word. The syllables in each stanza correspond to the number of lines, i.e. 5 in each line in the first stanza, 4 in the second stanza and so on. This form may contain more than five stanzas.

Example

Love, At Last...

If the ground should quake,
If the sky should fall,
If the rain lets up,
If the plants all die,
There is one thing left.

If we lose sight,
If we can't speak,
If the bow breaks,
on the last tree,

we won't cry
or resign,
for we know

there's one
thing left:

love.


Copyright © 2005 Tatyana Carney

Any drama written as verse to be spoken; another possible general term is poetic drama.

Example

NA

[n] unrhymed verse without a consistent metrical pattern

A term describing various styles of poetry that are not written using strict meter or rhyme, but that still are recognizable as 'poetry' by virtue of complex patterns of one sort or another that readers can perceive to be part of a coherent whole.

Example

Fog
by Carl Sandburg

THE FOG comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

Synonyms

vers libre

See Also...

poem, verse form

[n] a piece of poetry
[n] a line of metrical text
[n] literature in metrical form

Verse is a single metrical line of poetry, or poetry in general (as opposed to prose which uses grammatical units like sentences and paragraphs). "Verse" is also used as a general term for metrical composition. Not all verse is poetry and sacred books such as the Holy Bible are divided into small verses.

Example

NA

Synonyms

poesy, poetry, rhyme, verse line

See Also...

Adonic, Adonic line, clerihew, decasyllable, doggerel, doggerel verse, epos, genre, hexameter, iambic, jingle, limerick, line, literary genre, octameter, octosyllable, pentameter, poem, tetrameter, verse form, writing style