Practical Guide to English Versification With a Compendious Dictionary of Rhymes, an Examination of Classical Measures, and Comments Upon Burlesque and Comic Verse, Vers de Société, and Song-writing

Although song-writing is one of the most difficult styles of versification, it is now held in but little repute, owing to the unfortunate condition of the musical world in Engla...

The structure of our verses, whether blank or in rhyme, consists in a certain number of syllables; not in feet composed of long and short syllables, as the verses of the Greeks...

In the poems composed in couplets, the rhymes follow one another, and end at each couplet; that is to say, the second verse rhymes to the first, the fourth to the third, the six...

I t was scarcely possible to explain what the feet in verse are without assuming the existence of lines, in order to give intelligible examples of the various feet. But the cons...

"But most by numbers judge a poet's song, And smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong: These equal syllables alone require, Tho' oft the ear the open vowels tire; While ex...

I t will be as well for the reader to divest himself at once of the notion that verse of this class is the lowest and easiest form he can essay, or that the rules which govern i...

There is little doubt that the best and easiest way of learning English grammar is through the Latin. That English versification cannot be similarly acquired through the Latin i...

Rhyme is a likeness or uniformity of sound in the terminations of two words. I say of sound, not of letters; for the office of rhyme being to content and please the ear, and not...

The earliest handbook of verse appears to be that of Bysshe, who is, by the way, described in the British Museum Catalogue as "the Poet." The entry is the only ground I can find...

A rhyme must commence on an accented syllable. From the accented vowel of that syllable to the end, the two or more words intended to rhyme must be identical in sound; but the l...

The figures most commonly used in verse are similes and metaphors. A simile is a figure whereby one thing is likened to another. It is ushered in by a "like" or an "as."

The feet most often met with in English verse are those corresponding with the trochee and iambus,[9] that is approximately. The iambic is most common perhaps, represented by tw...