Poetry & verse

Blank Verse

Unrhymed lines written in iambic pentameter.

Blank verse keeps the discipline of a regular meter but drops end rhyme, giving it a flexible, speech-like dignity. Writers use it for drama and long poems because it sounds natural yet stately, well suited to sustained thought. It became the standard medium of English verse drama.

Example

Milton tells his epic in unrhymed iambic pentameter, letting sentences unspool across many lines with grandeur but no jingling rhyme.

Paradise Lost · John Milton

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