Glossary

see Concrete poetry.

see Onomatopoeia.

(Greek, ‘a choice’)

A brief pastoral poem, set in an idyllic rural place but discussing urban, court, political, or social issues. Bucolics and idylls, like eclogues, are pastoral poems in non-dramatic form. Examples are Alexander Barclay's Eclogues, Edmund Spenser's Shepheardes Calender: April, Jonathan Swift's "A Town Eclogue," and Andrew Marvell's "Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Fawn."

A Greek or Latin form in alternating dactylic hexameter and dactylic pentameter lines; and a melancholy poem lamenting its subject's death but ending in consolation. Examples in English include John Milton's "Lycidas," Thomas Gray's "Elegy," Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Adonais," Alfred Lord Tennyson's "In Memoriam," Matthew Arnold's "Thyrsis," Gerard Manley Hopkins' "Wreck of the Deutschland," and Walt Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed." Ambrose Bierce parodies Gray's poem in Elegy."

A quatrain with the rhyme scheme abab written in iambic pentameter. See also Distich.

Omission of a consonant (e.g., "ere" for "ever") or a vowel (e.g., "tother" for "the other"), usually to achieve a metrical effect.

The non-metrical omission of letters or words whose absence does not impede the reader's ability to understand the expression. For example, the last line in the following leaves the lexical verb understood:

Hugh, he could fancy
No one but Nancy,
And Sally got antsy
Just thinking of Chauncy,
    But Nancy liked Drew
    And Chauncy did too.

(I.L.)

A verse line ending at a grammatical boundary or break, such as a dash, a closing parenthesis, or punctuation such as a colon, a semi-colon, or a period. The opposite to an end-stopped line is a line subject to enjambement.

The running over of a sentence or phrase from one verse to the next, without terminal punctuation, hence not end-stopped. Such verses can be called run-on lines.

The brief stanza that ends a poem such as the ballade or the sestina. See also Tornada.

An extended narrative poem with a heroic or superhuman protagonist engaged in an action of great significance in a vast setting (often including the underworld and engaging the gods). Examples of epic poems are Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, John Milton's Paradise Lost, William Wordsworth's The Prelude, Elizabeth Barret Browning's Aurora Leigh, and T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land."

Extended comparison or cluster of similes or metaphors.

A quotation, taken from another literary work, that is placed at the start of a poem under the title. For example, T. S. Eliot's "Gerontion" begins with a quotation from Shakespeare's play Measure for Measure.

A brief witty poem. Randle Cotgrave (1611) translates "Epigramme" as "An Epigram; a Couplet, Stanzo, or short Poeme, wittily taxing a particular person, or fault; also, a title, inscription, or superscription."

A verse epistle imitates the form of a personal letter, addressed to someone in particular, often very personal and occasional, and sometimes dated, with a location affixed. Alexander Pope's "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot" can hardly be bettered.

Successive phrases, lines, or clauses that repeat the same word or words at their ends.

A burial inscription, often in verse. Philip Reder's Epitaphs (London: Michael Joseph, 1969) collected authentic examples, largely from British gravestones. Here are two:

            Here lies Robert Wallis,
            Clerk of All Hallows,
            King of good fellows,
            And maker of bellows.
  He bellows did make till the day of his death,
  But he that made bellows could never make breath. (p. 53; Newcastle-upon-Tyne)

I poorly lived, and poorly died,
And when I was buried, nobody cried. (p. 89; Lillington)

Dorothy Parker's "Epitaph for a Darling Lady" makes light of the form.

Lyric poem in praise of Hymen (the Greek god of marriage) or of a particular wedding, such as Edmund Spenser's "Epithalamion."

Greek and Latin metrical foot consisting of short, long, long, and long syllables / ~ ' ' ' / in any order.

Repetition of a word several times without connectives.

(Greek, ‘sung after’)

The third section (or the stand) of a Pindaric ode, after the strophe and antistophe.

A pleasing harmony of sounds.

See Rhyme.

A narrative that teaches a moral.