Enclosed rhyme (or enclosing rhyme) is the rhyme scheme ABBA (that is, where the first and fourth lines, and the second and third lines rhyme). Enclosed-rhyme quatrains are used in introverted quatrains, as in the first two stanzas of Petrarchan sonnets.
How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, | A | |
Stolen on his wing my three and twentieth year! | B | |
My hasting days fly on with full career | B | |
But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th. | A |
"Exposure", by Wilfred Owen, [2] also has an example of enclosed rhyme. Each of the eight stanzas have the ABBA half rhyming sequence:
Our brains ache in the merciless iced east winds that knive us ... | A | |
Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent ... | B | |
Low, drooping flares confuse our memories of the salient ... | B | |
Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous, | A | |
But nothing happens. |
Poetry is a form of literary art that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, literal or surface-level meanings. Any particular instance of poetry is called a poem and is written by a poet. Poets use a variety of techniques called poetic devices, such as assonance, alliteration, euphony and cacophony, onomatopoeia, rhythm, and sound symbolism, to produce musical or incantatory effects. Most poems are formatted in verse: a series or stack of lines on a page, which follow a rhythmic or other deliberate pattern. For this reason, verse has also become a synonym for poetry.
A quatrain is a type of stanza, or a complete poem, consisting of four lines.
The term sonnet derives from the Italian word sonetto. It refers to a fixed verse poetic form, traditionally consisting of fourteen lines adhering to a set rhyming scheme. Originating in 13th century Sicily, the sonnet was in time taken up in many European language areas, mainly to express romantic love at first, although eventually any subject was considered acceptable. Many formal variations were also introduced, including abandonment of the quatorzain limit - and even of rhyme altogether in modern times.
In poetry, a stanza is a group of lines within a poem, usually set off from others by a blank line or indentation. Stanzas can have regular rhyme and metrical schemes, but they are not required to have either. There are many different forms of stanzas. Some stanzaic forms are simple, such as four-line quatrains. Other forms are more complex, such as the Spenserian stanza. Fixed verse poems, such as sestinas, can be defined by the number and form of their stanzas.
A tercet is composed of three lines of poetry, forming a stanza or a complete poem.
Musophilus is a long poem by Samuel Daniel, first published in 1599 in his Poetical Essays.
Rhyme royal is a rhyming stanza form that was introduced to English poetry by Geoffrey Chaucer. The form enjoyed significant success in the fifteenth century and into the sixteenth century. It has had a more subdued but continuing influence on English verse in more recent centuries.
"Dulce et Decorum est" is a poem written by Wilfred Owen during World War I, and published posthumously in 1920. Its Latin title is from a verse written by the Roman poet Horace: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. In English, this means "it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country". The poem is one of Owen's most renowned works; it is known for its horrific imagery and its condemnation of war. It was drafted at Craiglockhart in the first half of October 1917 and later revised, probably at Scarborough, but possibly at Ripon, between January and March 1918. The earliest known manuscript is dated 8 October 1917 and is addressed to the poet's mother, Susan Owen, with the note "Here is a gas poem done yesterday ."
A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhymes at the end of each line of a poem or song. It is usually referred to by using letters to indicate which lines rhyme; lines designated with the same letter all rhyme with each other.
A rubāʿī or chahārgāna is a poem or a verse of a poem in Persian poetry in the form of a quatrain, consisting of four lines.
Onegin stanza, sometimes "Pushkin sonnet", refers to the verse form popularized by the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin through his 1825–1832 novel in verse Eugene Onegin. The work was mostly written in verses of iambic tetrameter with the rhyme scheme aBaBccDDeFFeGG, where the lowercase letters represent feminine rhymes and the uppercase representing masculine rhymes. For example, here is the first stanza of Onegin as rendered into English by Charles Johnston:
A sestet is six lines of poetry forming a stanza or complete poem. A sestet is also the name given to the second division of an Italian sonnet, which must consist of an octave, of eight lines, succeeded by a sestet, of six lines.
The Petrarchan sonnet, also known as the Italian sonnet, is a sonnet named after the Italian poet Francesco Petrarca, although it was not developed by Petrarch himself, but rather by a string of Renaissance poets. Because of the structure of Italian, the rhyme scheme of the Petrarchan sonnet is more easily fulfilled in that language than in English. The original Italian sonnet form consists of a total of fourteen hendecasyllabic lines in two parts, the first part being an octave and the second being a sestet.
This is a glossary of poetry terms.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and introduction to poetry:
"On the Late Massacre in Piedmont" is a sonnet by the English poet John Milton inspired by the Easter massacre of Waldensians in Piedmont by the troops of Charles Emmanuel II, Duke of Savoy in April 1655. Also known as Milton’s “Sonnet 18,” “On the Late Massacre at Piedmont” has been described by the famous essayist William Hazlitt as filled with “prophetic fury.”
Fixed verse forms are a kind of template or formula that poetry can be composed in. The opposite of fixed verse is free verse poetry, which by design has little or no pre-established guidelines.
Decasyllabic quatrain is a poetic form in which each stanza consists of four lines of ten syllables each, usually with a rhyme scheme of AABB or ABAB. Examples of the decasyllabic quatrain in heroic couplets appear in some of the earliest texts in the English language, as Geoffrey Chaucer created the heroic couplet and used it in The Canterbury Tales. The alternating form came to prominence in late 16th-century English poetry and became fashionable in the 17th century when it appeared in heroic poems by William Davenant and John Dryden. In the 18th century famous poets such as Thomas Gray continued to use the form in works such as "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard". Shakespearean Sonnets, comprising 3 quatrains of iambic pentameter followed by a final couplet, as well as later poems in blank verse have displayed the various uses of the decasyllabic quatrain throughout the history of English Poetry.
Soldier's Dream is a poem written by English war poet Wilfred Owen. It was written in October 1917 in Craiglockhart, a suburb in the south-west of Edinburgh (Scotland), while the author was recovering from shell shock in the trenches, inflicted during World War I. The poet died one week before the Armistice of Compiègne, which ended the conflict on the Western Front.
"Reuben Bright" is a (modified) Petrarchan sonnet written by American poet Edwin Arlington Robinson, early in his career, and published in Children of the Night (1897). The poem acquired some fame as teaching material for English teachers.