Rhymes are not always used in poetry. Most of Shakespeare's plays are written in blank verse, which is unrhymed iambic pentameter, called heroic verse. Frequently appeal is made to the ear by a similarity of sound at the beginning of words. This is known as alliteration. In many cases this is very skillfully handled, as where Whittier uses the liquid consonants to make a more smooth and harmonious sound to the ear in the following line whose murmurings could not be heard in winter, but in the long summer days.
Quote: The music of whose liquid lip had been to us companionship.
Some of the major kinds of poetry are briefly discussed below.
Epic: Some writers are restricted in its application, is preferred here to use it in a broad sense to include various forms of narrative poetry, and to use the term greater, or heroic, epic to designate the smaller class of narratives which the older writers knew as epics. The measure must be of sonorous dignity, befitting the subject. The action is carried on by a mixture of narrative, dialogue, and soliloquy. Briefly to express its main characteristics, the epic treats of one great complex action, in grand style, and with fullness of detail. An example is Paradise Lost.
The term lesser epic includes the numerous forms of narrative poems from the old-time ballad to the modern story-telling poem.
Lyric: Is subjective and the author's personality is apparent. To many, the most perfect creation of poetic imagination is the lyric. Technically a lyric is a song, a short poem that can be set to music. But this must be interpreted in a wide sense, for though all songs that are sung are lyrics, the greater number of lyrics were never intended to be fitted to the closer requirements of vocal harmony. The lyric is usually contemplative and full of the choicest results of the poet's meditations. It influences action indirectly through direct appeals to the emotions.
Ode: There are no rules governing the form, the length of the stanza, the meter, the rhyme, may be as varied as the authors fancy desires. From these conditions, namely, the liberty of form, the direct and powerful inspiration, the sincere desire to return a favor, a poet might naturally be expected to produce his choicest work, and so he must.
Sonnet: May be addressed to any person or thing and is the direct personal expression of the author's feelings. It is like the ode, and also partakes of the general nature of the elegy, but differs from both in the rigidity of the rules of form that govern it. Sonnets originated in Italy. It must consist of exactly fourteen lines of iambic pentameter. These lines are divided into two groups, one of which consists of eight lines or two quatrains, the whole known as the octave. The remaining six lines constitute the sestet. The first and last line of each quatrain rhyme together, while the middle lines of each form the second rhyme. In the sestet usually the first line rhymes with the fourth, the second with the fifth and the third with the sixth. As a whole the sonnet contains one idea, which in the octave is general, in the sestet specific, for the sestet expresses the conclusion of the octave.
Sounds rather complicated and doomed to failure? But this is hardly fair to the many exquisitely beautiful lyrics that in this form grace the English language. Those "little pictures painted well," those "monuments of a moment" are among our most graceful poems, and the reader who has not learned to delight in a beautiful sonnet has missed the most refined pleasure English literature has to give. Victor and Vanquished, by Longfellow is a precious example.
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