Poetry & verse

Verse

Writing arranged in lines with rhythm, and often meter or rhyme, as opposed to prose.

Verse is language shaped into lines whose breaks and rhythm are part of the meaning, the basic medium of poetry. Writers use verse to heighten language, control pacing through line and sound, and set writing apart from ordinary speech. The term can name poetry broadly or a single line or stanza.

Example

Chaucer tells most of his pilgrims’ stories in rhymed verse, whose steady lines carry the humor and sweep of the journey.

The Canterbury Tales · Geoffrey Chaucer

See it in action

Analyses on StoryBites that use verse:

OthelloWilliam Shakespeare

Related terms

ProseOrdinary written language that runs in sentences and paragraphs without metrical structure.MeterThe regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables that gives a poem its rhythm.StanzaA grouped set of lines in a poem, set off from others by a space.

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