Verse can have different meanings. It can be a single metrical line of poetry or poetry in general (as opposed to prose, which uses grammatical units like sentences and paragraphs) which can contain meter which is a syllable pattern within a poem. A verse may refer to a stanza or line in a poem with a recurring pattern. It is also used as a general term for metrical composition or a pattern of beats within the line of the poem.
Not all verse is poetry and sacred books such as the Holy Bible are divided into small verses.
Verse poetry can come in different forms such as free verse or blank verse. A free verse poem has no set meter; the contents flow freely to the author's design. A blank verse poem has no rhyming theme, but it does involve an iambic pentameter which is a meter of ten syllables such as the plays written by William Shakespeare.
A verse is often the identifying factor of poetry and is the more recognizable form. Verse poems are also sometimes identified as stanza poems; while not being incorrect it is only partially accurate for a stanza is contained within a verse.
Example
AFTER the Sea-Ship—after the whistling winds;
After the white-gray sails, taut to their spars and ropes,
Below, a myriad, myriad waves, hastening, lifting up their necks,
Tending in ceaseless flow toward the track of the ship:
Waves of the ocean, bubbling and gurgling, blithely prying,
Waves, undulating waves—liquid, uneven, emulous waves,
Toward that whirling current, laughing and buoyant, with curves,
Where the great Vessel, sailing and tacking, displaced the surface;
Larger and smaller waves, in the spread of the ocean, yearnfully flowing;
The wake of the Sea-Ship, after she passes—flashing and frolicsome, under the sun,
A motley procession, with many a fleck of foam, and many fragments,
Following the stately and rapid Ship—in the wake following.
1 To the chief Musician for the sons of Korah, A Song upon Alamoth. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
2 Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;
3 Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. Selah.