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and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
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  RHYMES AND
  METERS

  A PRACTICAL MANUAL
  FOR VERSIFIERS

  BY
  HORATIO WINSLOW

  THE EDITOR PUBLISHING COMPANY
  Deposit, N. Y.
  1909



  COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY
  THE EDITOR PUBLISHING COMPANY

  THE OUTING PRESS
  DEPOSIT, N. Y.




PREFACE


Throughout the following pages "verse" stands for any kind of metrical
composition as distinguished from prose. It is not used as a synonym for
"poetry." Though most poetry is in verse form, most verse is not poetry.
The ability to write verse can be acquired; only a poet can write
poetry. At the same time, even a poet must learn to handle his verse
with some degree of skill or his work is apt to fall very flat, and the
mere verse writer who cannot rhyme correctly and fit his lines together
in meter had much better stick to prose.

This book has been compiled with one end in view: to arrange in a
convenient and inexpensive form the fundamentals of verse--enough for
the student who takes up verse as a literary exercise or for the older
verse writer who has fallen into a rut or who is a bit shaky on theory.
It is even hoped that there may be a word of help for some embryo poet.

In construction the plan has been to suggest rather than to explain in
detail and as far as possible to help the reader to help himself. No
verse has been quoted except where the illustration of a point made it
necessary. With the increasing number of libraries it ought to be an
easy matter for any one to refer to most of the lesser verse writers as
well as all the standard poets.




CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I
      VERSE MAKING IN GENERAL                9

  CHAPTER II
      METER                                 17

  CHAPTER III
      RHYME                                 25

  CHAPTER IV
      STANZA FORMS                          31

  CHAPTER V
      SUBTLETIES OF VERSIFICATION           37

  CHAPTER VI
      THE QUATRAIN AND SONNET               45

  CHAPTER VII
      THE BALLADE AND OTHER FRENCH FORMS    53

  CHAPTER VIII
      THE SONG                              67

  CHAPTER IX
      TYPES OF MODERN VERSE                 75

  CHAPTER X
      VERSE TRANSLATION                     85

  CHAPTER XI
      ABOUT READING                         93

  CHAPTER XII
      HINTS FOR BEGINNERS                  101

  APPENDIX
      (a) THE VERSE MARKET                 111

      (b) SUGGESTIONS FOR READING          114




I

VERSE MAKING IN GENERAL



CHAPTER I

VERSE MAKING IN GENERAL


It is scarcely necessary to write a defense of verse making. As a
literary exercise it has been recommended and practiced by every
well-known English writer and as a literary asset it has been of
practical value at one time or another to most of the authors of to-day.
Indirectly it helps one's prose and is an essential to the understanding
of the greatest literature.

The fact that courses in "Poetics" have been established at all the
large universities shows the interest which verse making has aroused in
America. In England the ability to write metrical verse has long been
considered one of the component parts of the education of a university
man.

Looked at from the purely practical side, even though not a single line
be sold, verse making has its value. It strengthens the vocabulary;
teaches niceness in the choice of words; invigorates the imagination and
disciplines the mind far more than a dozen times the amount of prose.

But, though careful verse is much more difficult to write than careful
prose, slipshod verse is not worth the ink that shapes it. In taking up
verse writing the student must solemnly resolve on one thing: to
consider no composition complete until it proves up--until the rhymes
and meter are perfect. This "perfection" is not as unattainable as it
sounds, for the laws of rhyme and meter are as fixed as the laws of the
Medes and the Persians. Any one may not be able to write artistic verse,
but any one can write true verse, and the only way to make a course in
verse writing count is to live up to all the rules; to banish all ideas
of "poetic license"; to write and rewrite till the composition is as
near perfect as lies in one, and finally to lay aside and rewrite again.

After the line scans and the rhymes are proved should come the effort
