many critics judge blank verse to be better than rhyme for serious subjects, and many poets have used blank verse for their most important works. shakespeare used rhyme in his early plays, but in his more mature works like "hamlet" he preferred blank verse. john milton wrote "paradise lost" in blank verse, including a note at the beginning of the poem saying that rhyming poetry was used to disguise badly written poems, lord tennyson used it for "idylles of the king", and wordsworth used it for "the prelude" and "the excursion". john keats used rhyme in his "endymion", his first try at a major poem; for his second attempt, "hyperion", he switched to blank verse. the longest poems in english literature are written in blank verse, for example "the fall of nineveh" by edwin atherstone or "king alfred" by john fitchett. this last is about 130 000 lines long.