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Prose vs. Poetry: Their Differences, Overlaps, and Writing Each

Sean Glatch  |  July 8, 2024  |  One Comment

The difference between prose and poetry seems easy to explain: one has blocks of text and fully-fleshed characters, the other has line breaks and pretty words. That’s it, right?

Despite their visual quirks, prose and poetry share many similarities: prose can be musical, poetry can have plots and characters, and both are millennia-old traditions. As such, it would be wrong to prescribe a rigid decision tree for writing prose vs. poetry—many writers have both in their toolkits, relying on each form to communicate different truths.

“Poetry creates the myth, the prose writer draws its portrait.” —Jean-Paul Sartre

So what is the difference between poetry and prose? And which should you write for which occasions? Again, we won’t give hard-and-fast rules, but we can explore their differences in depth and discuss their possibilities.

First, we’ll discuss the features of prose and poetry independently, then we’ll loop back to examine both their differences and their areas of overlap.

Prose Vs. Poetry: Contents

Prose Versus Verse: Line Breaks

Prose is more functional than poetry, how to read prose, further readings in fiction and nonfiction, artistic definitions of poetry vary, poetry uses language richly, how to read poetry, further readings in poetry, poetry vs. prose: a clear example of each, 5 similar features of prose and poetry, 10 differences between prose and poetry, poetry vs. prose venn diagram, prose vs. poetry: a final note on literary binaries, prose vs. poetry: defining prose.

Prose is the more common writing form that everyone is comfortable reading and writing. This article relies on prose—as do most ( but not all! ) novels, and just about all news stories, instruction manuals, scientific papers, and so on.

The most straightforward rule of thumb for knowing that you’re reading prose (as opposed to its counterpart, verse ) is that there are no defined line breaks : words go all the way to the edge of the page without “turning back” early.

A rule of thumb for prose (as opposed to its counterpart, verse ) is that there are no defined line breaks.

Again, that’s how this blog article works, along with most other writing, from tweets to short stories to scientific papers.

So why would you stop writing prose, and move over to the with-line-breaks type of writing known as verse? The line breaks aren’t arbitrary, but reflect an underlying difference in how prose and verse tend to be structured. To quote the always-helpful Wikipedia:

“Where the common unit of verse is based on meter or rhyme, the common unit of prose is purely grammatical, such as a sentence or paragraph.”

So is verse (writing with line breaks) always poetry? While two are often used synonymously, defining poetry requires more than just scanning for line breaks: as we’ll discuss below, poetry is also about the rich and musical use of language.

Prose is not the counterpart of poetry, but the counterpart of verse.

So prose is not the counterpart of poetry, but rather the counterpart of verse. So verse is not what strictly defines poetry. In fact, not all poetry is in verse—specifically, prose poetry isn’t. In other words, prose and poetry do overlap, whereas prose and verse don’t.

Most poetry is in verse, but some poetry is in prose.

We go into more detail on line breaks, stanzas, and the use of page space in the sections below.

A helpful pattern in understanding prose vs. poetry is as follows: prose tends to work in clearer meanings, and to be less musical (that is, working with the inherent rhythms and sonic properties of language) and less densely packed with meanings, literary devices , and associations, than poetry.

As such, prose writing tends to be linear: while a prosaic sentence can twist and turn, it tends to share clear information, generally in a logical order.

Prose tends to work in clearer meanings, and to be less musical and dense, than poetry.

Again, exceptions exist, notably prose poetry : prose writing—writing with no line endings or defined rhythmic meter—that is highly musical and dense, and that is generally more impressionistic and multifaceted than most prose in the meanings it conveys.

And then there’s prose writing that is enigmatic and dreamlike rather than clear and orderly, such as the stream-of-consciousness prose writing in James Joyce’s Ulysses .

These exceptions prove the rule, though: most other prose, from this blog article your friend’s next Facebook post to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein , tends to follow the delineation described here.

We’ll allow Hemingway a last word with a slightly macho, not-applicable-to-every-prose-work, but still helpful description of prose: “Prose is architecture, not interior decoration.”

Sound good? To get a stronger feel for prose and further acquaint yourself with prose writing, take a look at the readings below.

This article gives close reading strategies for prose writing.

How to Read Prose: Close Reading Strategies for Prose Writers

The articles below outline helpful practices for numerous kinds of prose writing, from flash fiction to the novel, focusing especially on the common ingredients of storytelling .

• Crafting a Story Outline
• Freytag’s Pyramid
• Literary Devices in Prose
• Writing Flash Fiction
• Writing the Short Story
• Writing the Novella
• Writing the Novel

Prose vs. Poetry: Defining Poetry

Poetry is the oldest literary form, predating the written word (and therefore, prose) by several millennia. Up until the printing press revolutionized the distribution of literature, poetry was the main form for storytellers, who used meter and rhythm to perform oral retellings of their work.

So, what is poetry? As we’ve seen in our introduction to prose above, most—but not all—poetry is written in verse: writing with line breaks, organized around rhythm or meter rather than grammar. Still, we’ve also seen that verse is not what defines poetry, nor is all poetry based in verse.

So it’s not simply another word for verse. Is there an agreed-upon artistic definition of poetry as a literary form? (Spoiler: No.)

Artistic definitions of poetry change from poetic movement to poetic movement—and from poet to poet.

For example, William Wordsworth said that poetry is “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings… recollected in tranquility.” This sentiment—largely reflective of the Romantic era—certainly rings true for some poetry. However, New Formalist poets work with poetry to distill and reflect emotion through form and meter: in other words, structure over emotion.

The point is, there’s no singular way to define or understand the artistic aims of poetry. Rather, all poets must define these aims for themselves and write accordingly.

Poets must define the artistic aims of poetry for themselves and write accordingly.

Learning about poetry requires familiarizing yourself with what other poets have already done. This list of poetry movements can jumpstart your understanding of poetry’s complex and various histories.

Good poetry, from any tradition, sings and resonates beyond the merely “prosaic.”

Whatever literary tradition you ascribe to, poetry has a clear job to be rich, musical, evocative. Good poetry, from any tradition, sings and resonates in a way that goes beyond the merely “prosaic,” as in the following poem excerpt by Derek Walcott:

You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart.

So poetry, in any tradition, is the “cheesecake of language”: packed to the brim with sonic and expressive power. In poetry, it’s not enough to make a rational point straightforwardly, like the prosaic sentence you’re reading is doing.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge said this beautifully, and we can give him the last word in defining poetry.

“Poetry: the best words in the best order.” —Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Cool, right? If you’d like to learn more, check out our guides for reading and understanding poetry.

This article gives close reading strategies for poetry writing.

How to Read Poetry Like a Poet

The articles below outline helpful practices poetry writing, including deep dives on common literary devices in poetry and established poetry forms.

• What is Poetry
• Poetry Forms
• Writing and Publishing a Poetry Book

Let’s cap the definitions of poetry and prose above by simply giving a clear example of each.

Here is some beautiful fiction writing that is definitely prose:

They were nearly born on a bus, Estha and Rahel. The car in which Baba, their father, was taking Ammu, their mother, to hospital in Shillong to have them, broke down on the winding tea-estate road in Assam. They abandoned the car and flagged down a crowded State Transport bus. With the queer compassion of the very poor for the comparatively well off, or perhaps only because they saw how hugely pregnant Ammu was, seated passengers made room for the couple, and for the rest of the journey Estha and Rahel’s father had to hold their mother’s stomach (with them in it) to prevent it from wobbling. That was before they were divorced and Ammu came back to live in Kerala.

—Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

And here is some writing that is definitely poetry:

We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.

—Shakespeare, The Tempest

Having defined prose and poetry above, the reality is that they can be more similar than you might imagine. We’ll discuss their differences in a moment, but first, it’s important to understand the shared potential that each form holds:

• Musicality and rhythm
• Use of colloquial speech
• Use of literary devices
• Ability to tell stories
• Show, don’t tell

1. Musicality and Rhythm

It’s a common misconception that only poetry can be musical. While rhythm and meter are important aspects of a poem’s construction, musicality begins with language, not with structure.

An immediate example of “musical prose” is The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Susan Bell, writer of The Artful Edit , argues that Gatsby finds its success precisely because of the story’s musical, elegant storytelling—certainly, the book has a charged poeticism that feels just as decadent and tasteful as the high society of the Roaring Twenties. Below is some undeniably musical prose:

2. Use of Literary Devices

Things are like other things, which is the essence of literary devices. While some devices are unique to each form—poems have enjambment, prose can begin in media res —a successful piece of writing requires literary devices .

3. Use of Colloquial Speech

Yes, some writing uses lofty and erudite language. However, contemporary prose and poetry writers, from all eras, recognize the importance of speaking to their audience.

Colloquial speech is one way of speaking to your audience. A colloquialism is a turn of phrase with a specific social and temporal context. For example, “groovy” belongs to the American 1970s, Victorian Brits called a brave person “bricky,” and Gen Z’ers “stan” on Twitter.

In literature, Jay Gatsby’s “old sport” is just as colloquial as the poem “A Study of Reading Habits ,” which uses phrases like “right hook” and “load of crap.”

4. Storytelling

Another common misconception is that poetry doesn’t tell stories. While fiction and nonfiction are the genres of prose, poetry also possesses a powerful narrative voice.

Singular poems can tell grand stories, especially poetry in antiquity. The Epic of Gilgamesh , The Odyssey , and Beowulf are all stories in verse, as are novel-poems like Autobiography of Red .

Additionally, contemporary poetry collections often tell stories, just with less linearity. Louise Gluck’s collection Wild Iris is told from the perspective of a flower, and as the seasons change, the flower observes the infinite singularity of mankind, God, and the Universe.

5. Show, Don’t Tell Writing

It’s important for storytellers to demonstrate their ideas without spoon feeding the reader. In other words, writers should Show instead of Tell.

Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. —Anton Chekhov

We consider “Show, Don’t Tell” a golden rule of writing. Brush up on it here !

We’ve discussed their similarities, but the difference between poetry and prose is usually fairly clear in practice. The following ten items distinguish the two. To help demonstrate our point, we represent each form with a well known piece of literature. Poetry examples were pulled from Dylan Thomas’ “ Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night ,” and prose examples come from “ The Cask of Amontillado ” by Edgar Allan Poe.

1. Prose vs. Poetry: Use of Page Space

In prose, a line of text begins and ends at the margins of the page. In poetry, the author uses shorter lines, broken before the page margins to introduce multiple meanings. Line breaks are an enduring feature of what differentiates prose and poetry, adding extra emphasis to certain words and sounds.

You’ll notice in prose that a partial line occurs only before a new paragraph.

In poetry, the line breaks mean something more intentional. The ending words can help uphold meter and rhyme schemes, and it also emphasizes important words: “night” and “light” are repeatedly pit against each other in Thomas’ villanelle .

2. Prose vs. Poetry: Paragraphs vs. Stanzas

Prose passages divide single ideas into sentences, and those sentences go on to form paragraphs. A new paragraph signifies the introduction of new ideas or the continuation of relevant information.

The equivalent of a paragraph in poetry is the stanza. Stanzas are groupings of lines which act as units of meaning, with different stanzas containing different ideas and images.

3. Prose vs. Poetry: Single vs. Multiple Meanings

In prose, the meaning of each word is usually straightforward, with double meanings (like puns and irony) clearly expressed. Most prose relies on clear meanings to deliver clear, linear messages.

By contrast, the language of poetry contains multitudes. One word can hold many different meanings, and ideas can be broken into both sentences and lines.

Take the line “old age should burn and rave at close of day.” The word rave can mean multiple things: it can mean to rant and rave as old people (stereotypically) do, or it can mean to rage and fight against. The pun here is intended to energize the reader,

4. Prose vs. Poetry: Noun-Verb Placements

In Standard English , which is the common (but not default) language of prose, nouns and verbs are found close to each other. This is a facet of “clear communication”—it’s important to know who is doing what as efficiently as possible.

We have bolded the noun-verb pairs in an excerpt from both the poem and prose piece.

Notice how the noun-verb pairs can stray from each other much more easily in poetry. Dylan Thomas inserts a noun-verb pair between a noun-verb pair in each stanza—which is much harder to use effectively in prose.

Notice that, in prose, a noun can have multiple verbs attached to it, but the first verb is almost always next to the noun.

5. Prose vs. Poetry: Rhyme (Sometimes)

There are two types of rhyme: internal and external rhyme. External rhyme occurs at the ends of lines, such as the many “-ight” words in Thomas’ poem.

Internal rhyme refers to words that rhyme with each other inside the same beat. These rhymes are not always intentional or charged with meaning, but they occur, such as in this sentence from Poe’s story:

“We had passed through walls of piled bones , with casks and puncheons intermingling, into the inmost recesses of the catacombs.”

Bones and catacombs aptly rhyme with each other. Note, rhyme is not a necessary feature of any prose and many poems. Though some poetry forms do require rhyme schemes, contemporary poets tend to eschew rhyming.

6. Prose vs. Poetry: Meter (Sometimes)

Like rhyme, meter is an (often) optional component of poetry writing. Meter refers to the stress patterns of syllables and the number of syllables per line. Well-executed meter can give poetry a certain musical quality.

Thomas’ poem is written in iambic pentameter, a requirement of the traditional villanelle form. This means there are 10 syllables in each line, following an unstressed-stressed pattern. To understand syllable stress, read Thomas’ poem out loud, and note how every second syllable is emphasized harder than the first.

Prose does not rely on meter to tell a story.

Prose does not have any metrical requirements, and thank goodness for that. Meter can be extraordinarily tough to impose on a poem, but it also affects how the reader interprets the piece. However, prose does not rely on meter to tell a story, as these poetry devices often instill multiple meanings in a piece.

7. Prose vs. Poetry: Pragmatic vs. Imaginative Focus

On a macro-level, the vision of poets and prose writers tends to differ. Prose has a pragmatic focus, meaning that each word should clearly advance a specific idea or narrative. The focus of prose is storytelling, so the author has a duty to use words diligently.

While poetry can tell stories, a poem rarely focuses on plot points, settings, and characters.

While poetry can tell stories, a poem rarely focuses on plot points, settings, and characters. Rather, poetry has an imaginative focus. Words are allowed to break their conventional bounds in the goal of expressing emotions, and ideas can stack upon each other like grains of sand in a sand castle.

So, what’s pragmatic about Poe, and what’s imaginative about Thomas? Every word in Poe’s piece describes details and events that push the reader towards the climax. At no point does the reader jump out of the narrative to speculate or stargaze.

In Thomas’ poem, the words don’t point the reader towards a specific event, but they do encourage the reader to think deeply about abstract ideas. Old or young, the reader will contend with ideas of life, death, justice, goodness, and the judgment against our souls. In 19 lines of mostly concrete images, the poet asks us to read imaginatively—and in the process, to learn what we believe.

8. Prose vs. Poetry: Paraphrasability

A piece of prose can be summarized. If you ask “what is ‘The Cask of Amontillado’ about?”, it is possible to paraphrase the story and get the gist of its deeper meaning. In short, Poe’s story observes a man desperate for revenge, only to find that revenge often hurts both the punisher and the punished.

Poetry is generally harder to summarize than prose, because it tends to include greater multiplicities of meaning.

Poetry is generally harder to summarize than prose, because it tends to include greater multiplicities of meaning. No one can tell you what a certain poem means. They can tell you what it isn’t —for example, “Do Not Go Gentle” is not about heartbreak, war, or the summertime—but deciding what a poem means requires a reader’s own attention.

For example, one could summarize Thomas’ poem as “an ode to Thomas’ dying father, with a vengeful bent against mankind’s eventual death.” But, does saying that invoke Thomas’ juxtaposition of light and dark? His use of rhyme to draw a conceit? His need to believe in the transience of the soul? By the time you’ve summarized the poem, you’ve written something as long as the poem itself. Poetry cannot be paraphrased.

9. Prose vs. Poetry: Point of View

Prose and poetry treat “point of view” in very different ways. A point of view (POV) refers to who is telling the story. The storyteller doesn’t always have a name or a face, but they do inevitably change how a story is read.

In prose, there are 4 main POVs:

• First Person (I): The story is told in the first person, from a character who is either the protagonist or adjacent to the protagonist. The Cask of Amontillado uses the first person POV.
• Second Person (You): The story is told in the second person. Often, the writer will substitute “the protagonist” for “you,” making the story’s actions feel more intimate and personal. Second Person storytelling is rare, but not unheard of.
• Third Person Limited (He/She/They): The story is told in the third person, and it focuses on the perspective of the protagonist. We have access to most of their thoughts and feelings, but our access to other people is limited by the protagonist’s perspective. Sometimes, writers combine this with the intimacy of 1st person narration, in a technique called free indirect discourse .
• Third Person Omniscient (He/She/They): The story is told in the third person, and the narrator has access to everyone’s thoughts, feelings, and actions. We can jump from person to person with ease, interweaving webs of complex narratives together.

Some stories will also take a Third Person Mixed approach, meaning the meat of the story is told from the protagonist’s perspective, but the reader occasionally jumps to someone else’s POV or to a historical time period.

While poetry can use the same pronouns (I/You/He/She/They), it uses POV differently. A poem is always told from the perspective of “the speaker.” The speaker can be the poet themselves—Dylan Thomas is certainly the voice behind his poem, and he is certainly talking to his father. However, the correct approach is to always call the poem’s POV “the speaker,” as a poem can inhibit many different voices at once. Finally, poetry is much easier to apply to yourself when the speaker isn’t anyone in particular.

10. Prose vs. Poetry: Concision

Prose and poetry writers should both write concisely. Concise writing eschews redundancies and makes every word count. However, concision means something different for the two forms.

In prose, concision generally means that not a word is wasted in conveying information. Concise prose expresses its meaning clearly.

Concise prose expresses its meaning clearly.

Of course, good prose can still be long-winded, as long as this heightens the effect of the work. Take this sentence from Poe’s story:

“It must be understood that neither by word nor deed had I given Fortunato cause to doubt my good-will. I continued, as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of his immolation.”

These sentences are 19 and 27 words long, respectively. They can also be summarized as follows: “Fortunato thought my smile bore good-will, not the desire to immolate him.”

What does Poe’s long-windedness afford him? Despite being easily paraphrased, every word does count in these two sentences, because they are a part of the narrator’s characterization. He is a long-winded schemer, and that affects how the story must be told, since Poe has chosen the first person to make us intimate with the narrator’s internal conflict.

Poetry is a different situation. Because poetry has line breaks, stanzas, and (sometimes) rhyme and meter, its concision takes a different form. In a poem, it’s great if every word contains heavy meaning; it’s even greater when words contain multiplicities and challenge the reader’s ideas. Economy in poetry is maximizing its impact, musicality, and richness—not necessarily its clear, single meaning.

Economy in poetry is maximizing its impact, musicality, and richness—not necessarily its clear, single meaning.

If you stretched a poem into prose, it would read like a terrible short story, because the concision afforded to poetry is different than that of prose. Concise prose focuses more on clarity of meaning, and poetry more on maximizing the richness and impact of every syllable.

Any article like this risks making literature seem binary, as though prose and poetry were totally discrete entities; so in closing, it’s good to note again that writers, especially contemporary writers, often work at the intersection of prose and poetry, resulting in genres like the prose poem , the lyrical essay or the poetry novel . (And we haven’t even touched on scriptwriting, which is a different form of communication altogether.)

There is much to explore outside of poetry and prose; this article simply covers the basics. As you advance on your writing journey, don’t be afraid to experiment with words outside of the traditional “prose vs. poetry” binary. You might be shocked by what you can accomplish!

Explore both Prose and Poetry at Writers.com

Whether you’re experimenting with poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction, Writers.com has the classes to help you succeed. Take a look at our upcoming courses —and gain valuable insights from our instructors and writing community .

Sean Glatch

Great summary. I write poetry, prose poems, flash fiction and short stories so I’m using the grab bag of everything you said here! Never taught about line breaks, though. I see some poets going willy nilly all over the page. Maybe there just aren’t any rules where this is concerned…

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Writing About Poetry

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Writing about poetry can be one of the most demanding tasks that many students face in a literature class. Poetry, by its very nature, makes demands on a writer who attempts to analyze it that other forms of literature do not. So how can you write a clear, confident, well-supported essay about poetry? This handout offers answers to some common questions about writing about poetry.

What's the Point?

In order to write effectively about poetry, one needs a clear idea of what the point of writing about poetry is. When you are assigned an analytical essay about a poem in an English class, the goal of the assignment is usually to argue a specific thesis about the poem, using your analysis of specific elements in the poem and how those elements relate to each other to support your thesis.

So why would your teacher give you such an assignment? What are the benefits of learning to write analytic essays about poetry? Several important reasons suggest themselves:

• To help you learn to make a text-based argument. That is, to help you to defend ideas based on a text that is available to you and other readers. This sharpens your reasoning skills by forcing you to formulate an interpretation of something someone else has written and to support that interpretation by providing logically valid reasons why someone else who has read the poem should agree with your argument. This isn't a skill that is just important in academics, by the way. Lawyers, politicians, and journalists often find that they need to make use of similar skills.
• To help you to understand what you are reading more fully. Nothing causes a person to make an extra effort to understand difficult material like the task of writing about it. Also, writing has a way of helping you to see things that you may have otherwise missed simply by causing you to think about how to frame your own analysis.
• To help you enjoy poetry more! This may sound unlikely, but one of the real pleasures of poetry is the opportunity to wrestle with the text and co-create meaning with the author. When you put together a well-constructed analysis of the poem, you are not only showing that you understand what is there, you are also contributing to an ongoing conversation about the poem. If your reading is convincing enough, everyone who has read your essay will get a little more out of the poem because of your analysis.

What Should I Know about Writing about Poetry?

Most importantly, you should realize that a paper that you write about a poem or poems is an argument. Make sure that you have something specific that you want to say about the poem that you are discussing. This specific argument that you want to make about the poem will be your thesis. You will support this thesis by drawing examples and evidence from the poem itself. In order to make a credible argument about the poem, you will want to analyze how the poem works—what genre the poem fits into, what its themes are, and what poetic techniques and figures of speech are used.

What Can I Write About?

Theme: One place to start when writing about poetry is to look at any significant themes that emerge in the poetry. Does the poetry deal with themes related to love, death, war, or peace? What other themes show up in the poem? Are there particular historical events that are mentioned in the poem? What are the most important concepts that are addressed in the poem?

Genre: What kind of poem are you looking at? Is it an epic (a long poem on a heroic subject)? Is it a sonnet (a brief poem, usually consisting of fourteen lines)? Is it an ode? A satire? An elegy? A lyric? Does it fit into a specific literary movement such as Modernism, Romanticism, Neoclassicism, or Renaissance poetry? This is another place where you may need to do some research in an introductory poetry text or encyclopedia to find out what distinguishes specific genres and movements.

Versification: Look closely at the poem's rhyme and meter. Is there an identifiable rhyme scheme? Is there a set number of syllables in each line? The most common meter for poetry in English is iambic pentameter, which has five feet of two syllables each (thus the name "pentameter") in each of which the strongly stressed syllable follows the unstressed syllable. You can learn more about rhyme and meter by consulting our handout on sound and meter in poetry or the introduction to a standard textbook for poetry such as the Norton Anthology of Poetry . Also relevant to this category of concerns are techniques such as caesura (a pause in the middle of a line) and enjambment (continuing a grammatical sentence or clause from one line to the next). Is there anything that you can tell about the poem from the choices that the author has made in this area? For more information about important literary terms, see our handout on the subject.

Figures of speech: Are there literary devices being used that affect how you read the poem? Here are some examples of commonly discussed figures of speech:

• metaphor: comparison between two unlike things
• simile: comparison between two unlike things using "like" or "as"
• metonymy: one thing stands for something else that is closely related to it (For example, using the phrase "the crown" to refer to the king would be an example of metonymy.)
• synecdoche: a part stands in for a whole (For example, in the phrase "all hands on deck," "hands" stands in for the people in the ship's crew.)
• personification: a non-human thing is endowed with human characteristics
• litotes: a double negative is used for poetic effect (example: not unlike, not displeased)
• irony: a difference between the surface meaning of the words and the implications that may be drawn from them

Cultural Context: How does the poem you are looking at relate to the historical context in which it was written? For example, what's the cultural significance of Walt Whitman's famous elegy for Lincoln "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed" in light of post-Civil War cultural trends in the U.S.A? How does John Donne's devotional poetry relate to the contentious religious climate in seventeenth-century England? These questions may take you out of the literature section of your library altogether and involve finding out about philosophy, history, religion, economics, music, or the visual arts.

What Style Should I Use?

It is useful to follow some standard conventions when writing about poetry. First, when you analyze a poem, it is best to use present tense rather than past tense for your verbs. Second, you will want to make use of numerous quotations from the poem and explain their meaning and their significance to your argument. After all, if you do not quote the poem itself when you are making an argument about it, you damage your credibility. If your teacher asks for outside criticism of the poem as well, you should also cite points made by other critics that are relevant to your argument. A third point to remember is that there are various citation formats for citing both the material you get from the poems themselves and the information you get from other critical sources. The most common citation format for writing about poetry is the Modern Language Association (MLA) format .

The Difference between an Essay and a Poem

Unlike a poem, it's highly unlikely anyone will ever want to set one of your essays to music. While some poems may set out to accomplish the same goals as an essay, such as presenting an argument or telling a story, the structure, common techniques, and basic rules required for an essay are quite different than a poem.

No matter what type of essay you're asked to write, such as argumentative, expository, descriptive, or narrative, there are usually structuring requirements that must be applied. An introductory paragraph that presents your ideas, a body that lays out each of those ideas clearly, and a summary paragraph that presents some type of conclusion are the common requirements for most traditional essays.

Poems, on the other hand, can vary widely in structure. Haikus, sonnets, limericks, and ballads are all forms of poetry and each is defined by its unique and specific structure. Poems can rhyme or not rhyme, be freeform or limited to a certain number of syllables, and they can fill a book or be written in 14 lines of iambic pentameter.

Techniques for writing a good essay include presenting ordered points that relate back to a single thesis statement, writing interesting and relevant topic sentences to present ideas for each paragraph, and presenting excellent supportive references from outside sources.

Poems, on the other hand, use alliteration, creative similes and metaphors, onomatopoeia, assonance, and rhyming lines. However, many poems include none of these. Unlike essays, there are no universal techniques used in good poetry. Creativity wins the day over following hard and fast rules.

Grammar, Spelling, and Punctuation

Anyone who has ever submitted an essay assignment knows that grammar, spelling, and punctuation are key in a good essay. Every sentence should end with the proper punctuation mark, creative spelling is frowned upon, and an essay writer should proofread to ensure subject/verb agreement, sentence structure, and use of proper English.

In poetry, rules like these are often tossed out the window. Entire poems can be written with nary a punctuation mark in sight, and the creative use of language is encouraged.

In short, poems allow for a lot more creative freedom and can include a wide range of possible structures and techniques. An essay makes logical points that should be clear to anyone who reads it. Even the best poems, however, sometimes make sense to no one other than their authors.

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What Is The Difference Between Prose and Poetry?

• Published August 31, 2022

Poetry is an art form that has been around for centuries. It is a way to express oneself through the use of words and can be written in many different styles. There are many different types of poetry, such as sonnets, haikus, and ballads.

Poetry can be written about any topic, and it is often used to express emotions. But what is the difference between poetry and prose?

In this article, we outline the differences between the two popular forms of story-telling.

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Poetry VS Prose

Prose is a form of writing that is based on spoken language. It is characterised by its natural flow and rhythm, as well as its use of regular grammar and punctuation. Prose is often used for novels, short stories, and essays.

Poetry, on the other hand, is a form of writing that is based on musicality and rhythm. It is often characterized by its use of figurative languages, such as metaphors and similes. Poetry is often used for poems and some of its devices are also used in songwriting.

The major difference between the two is that poetry is a form of writing that uses rhythm and rhyme to create a musical or chant-like effect, whereas prose, is a form of writing that is more straightforward and doesn’t rely on rhyme or meter.

Poetry often uses figurative language to create images or expressive ideas, while prose is more literal. Prose is usually used for novels, essays, and nonfiction writing, while poetry is more often associated with literature, lyrics, and storytelling.

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The Poetry issue

The Shape of the Void: Toward a Definition of Poetry

“Poetry leaves something out,” our columnist Elisa Gabbert says. But that’s hardly the extent of it.

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By Elisa Gabbert

I once heard a student say poetry is language that’s “coherent enough.” I love a definition this ambiguous. It’s both helpful (there’s a limit to coherence, and the limit is aesthetic) and unhelpful (enough for what, or whom?). It reminds me of a dictionary entry for “detritus” that I copied down in a notebook: “the pieces that are left when something breaks, falls apart, is destroyed, etc.” That seemed so artfully vague to me, so uncharacteristically casual for a dictionary. It has a quality of distraction, of trailing off, of suggesting you already know what detritus means. Part of me resists the question of what poetry is, or resists the answer — you already know what it means.

But let’s answer it anyway, starting with the obvious: If the words have rhyme and meter, it’s poetry. Nonwords with rhyme and meter, as in “Jabberwocky,” also are poetry. And since words in aggregate have at least some rhyme and rhythm, which lines on the page accentuate, any words composed in lines are poetry. There’s something to be said for the obvious. Virginia Woolf wrote of E.M. Forster: “He says the simple things that clever people don’t say; I find him the best of critics for that reason. Suddenly out comes the obvious thing one has overlooked.”

Is there much else? I think so. I think poetry leaves something out. All texts leave something out, of course — otherwise they’d be infinite — but most of the time, more is left out of a poem. Verse, by forcing more white space on the page, is constantly reminding you of what’s not there. This absence of something, this hyper-present absence, is why prose poems take up less space than other prose forms; the longer they get, the less they feel like poems. It’s why fragments are automatically poetic: Erasure turns prose into poems. It’s why any text that’s alluringly cryptic or elusive — a road sign, assembly instructions — is described as poetic. The poetic is not merely beauty in language, but beauty in incoherence, in resistance to common sense. The missingness of poetry slows readers down, making them search for what can’t be found. The encounter is almost inherently frustrating, as though one could not possibly pay enough attention. This is useful: Frustration is erotic.

“What is poetry?” is not the same question, quite, as “What is a poem?” How many poems did Emily Dickinson write? It depends what you count. In “Writing in Time,” the scholar Marta Werner writes, of Dickinson’s so-called Master letters, “At their most fundamental, ontological level, we don’t know what they are.” Perhaps my favorite poem of Dickinson’s is not, perhaps, a poem — it’s an odd bit of verse in the form of a letter to her sister-in-law, ending with the loveliest, slantest of rhymes: “Be Sue, while/I am Emily —/Be next, what/you have ever/been, Infinity.” Are the “breaks” really breaks? The letter is written on a small, narrow card; the words go almost to the edge of the paper. I think, too, of Rilke’s letters, which often read like poems. In 1925, he wrote to his Polish translator: “We are the bees of the Invisible. We wildly gather the honey of the visible, in order to store it in the great golden hive of the Invisible.” In these letter-poems, poetry reveals itself as more a mode of writing, a mode of thinking, even a mode of being , than a genre. The poem is not the only unit of poetry; poetic lines in isolation are still poetry. The poem is a vessel; poetry is liquid.

From time to time I’m asked, with bewilderment or derision, if this or that poem isn’t just “prose chopped into lines.” This idea of the free verse poem as “chopped” prose comes from Ezra Pound via Marjorie Perloff, who quotes Pound in her influential essay “The Linear Fallacy,” published in 1981. The essay encourages an oddly suspicious, even paranoid reading of most free verse as phony poetry, as prose in costume. The line, in Perloff’s view, in these ersatz poems, is a “surface device,” a “gimmick.” She removes all the breaks from a C.K. Williams poem to make the case that a stanza without the intentional carriage returns is merely a paragraph.

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What’s the Difference Between Poetry and Prose?

19 Feb, 2024 | Blog Articles , English Language Articles , Get the Edge , Humanities Articles , Writing Articles

What are the key elements of poetry?

1. figurative language.

Figurative language quite simply means language that is not literal. This type of language is descriptive, and poets often use it to link a concrete object with an abstract idea. This non-literal description is used to invoke the reader’s emotions. 

A metaphor, for example, is a figurative technique; “the world is your oyster,” and “I could eat a horse,” are common metaphors. 

A simile is another example of figurative language. This is where the poet compares one thing with another to strengthen a description: for example in the final line of Sylvia Plath’s Mirror : 

“In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman / Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.” 

Personification, the attribution of human characteristics to something non-human (e.g. “the wind howled”), and symbolism, the use of symbols to represent ideas or qualities, are also figurative techniques. 

These all serve to draw mental associations between the concrete and the abstract, and enhance the imagery of the poem. 

2. Rhythm and Metre

Poetry also often employs rhythmic patterns and metre. Rhythm refers to the rhythmic structure of a line, composed of two or more syllables, while metre is used to describe the pattern of emphasis, or lack of emphasis, on each syllable. Poets choose different rhythms and metres to impact the musical quality of the poem. 

For example, iambic pentameter is a type of metric line used in traditional English poetry and verse drama – most famously in the works of Shakespeare. 

Rhythm is measured in small groups of syllables called “feet”. “Iambic” refers to the type of foot used: an “iamb” is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (e.g. the word “a-bove”). This creates the pattern: 

de/DUM de/DUM de/DUM de/DUM de/DUM 

“Pentameter” indicates that each line has five “feet” (think pent- as in “pentagon”, a shape with five sides). 

Consider Act 3, Scene 1 of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream : 

“And I do love thee. Therefore go with me. I’ll give thee fairies to attend on thee, And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep And sing while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep.” 

3. Line Breaks and Stanzas

Structure in poetry concerns how the poem’s different elements are organised. This includes: 

• Stanzas – a group of lines forming the basic recurring metrical unit in a poem; a.k.a a verse
• Line breaks
• Verse lengths 

Each impacts the way the reader experiences and interprets the poem.

For example, the Petrarchan sonnet organises itself into an octave, followed by a sestet. The first eight lines (often in ABBA ABBA rhyming scheme) raise a question that the next six lines, the sestet, answers. 

There’s typically a volta , or a turn, at the beginning of the sestet, indicating the change in the poem’s focus. Here, the way the poem’s stanzas are laid out can have a significant impact on the way the poem is read. 

These poems often concern love, and the volta in particular allows for narrative development in the poem. 

See Christina Rossetti’s After Death : 

“The curtains were half drawn, the floor was swept And strewn with rushes, rosemary and may Lay thick upon the bed on which I lay, Where through the lattice ivy-shadows crept. He leaned above me, thinking that I slept And could not hear him; but I heard him say, ‘Poor child, poor child’: and as he turned away Came a deep silence, and I knew he wept.   He did not touch the shroud, or raise the fold That hid my face, or take my hand in his, Or ruffle the smooth pillows for my head: He did not love me living; but once dead He pitied me; and very sweet it is To know he still is warm though I am cold.”

Line breaks also influence the way the poem is interpreted. In After Death, Rossetti employs enjambment (when a phrase flows seamlessly from one line to the next with no punctuation) to reflect the continuity of domestic life. 

4. Rhyme and Sound Patterns

Rhyme schemes, assonance, consonance and alliteration all draw attention to individual words within a poem. These words are drawn together through the repeated use of sound. 

For example, alliteration is the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words. In The Raven , Edgar Allan Poe uses plosive alliteration in the phrase “doubting, dreaming dreams”. 

Sibilance, the creation of a hissing sound by the repetition of the letter “s”, is also used:

“Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore”. 

Assonance, the rhyming of two or more stressed vowels in nearby words, creates a sense of rhythm, dictating which syllables should be stressed when the poem is read aloud. It’s also employed in The Raven : 

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary”.

A poem’s rhyme scheme, the pattern that outlines which sound each line should end with, lends poetry its tell-tale rhythmic structure. For example, the ABAB rhyme scheme rhymes the end of every other line. 

See the opening stanza of Robert Frost’s Neither Out Far Nor in Deep :

“The people along the sand All turn and look one way. They turn their back on the land. They look at the sea all day.”

Poets often put a rhyme scheme in place, only to break the pattern half-way through. This can work like a volta to indicate a shift in the narrative or to emphasise a particular thematic point. 

Imagery is the poet’s use of vivid description and language to enrich the reader’s understanding and appreciation of the piece. 

See the opening of T.S. Eliot’s Preludes :

“The winter evening settles down With smell of steaks in passageways. Six o’clock. The burnt-out ends of smoky days. And now a gusty shower wraps The grimy scraps Of withered leaves about your feet And newspapers from vacant lots;” 

The array of images conjured elevates the scene, as if we too are there in the street, with leaves at our feet and the smell of smoky steaks at our noses! 

6. Emotional Resonance

Poets also use literary techniques to express strong or intense emotions, which can deeply resonate with readers.

In Daffodils, William Wordsworth uses simple language to evoke loneliness, wonder and felicity: 

“I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.” 

Similarly, Audre Lorde’s If They Come in the Morning expresses a sense of danger and doom, as well as solidarity:

““If they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.”

She uses the personal pronouns “you” and “we” to connect to the reader, strengthening our connection to the poem and its sentiments.

7. Ambiguity

Poetry can initially be difficult to interpret and understand due to its ambiguity. Oftentimes students find it hard to connect to a poem, and in turn lose enthusiasm for poetry as a literary form. 

However, ambiguity is part of what makes poems so resonant, interesting and evocative! Readers can engage with the poem on multiple levels and connect to the words more personally – ambiguity allows room for interpretation. 

As William Empson wrote in his book Seven Types of Ambiguity : 

“The machinations of ambiguity are among the very roots of poetry.”

8. Lyrical Language

Lyric poems use a variety of techniques to produce a songlike quality. 

A sonnet is a popular form of lyric poetry, using its rhythm, structure and descriptions to enhance its beauty and likeness to a song. For example, Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 is notably lyrical, a quality that enhances the romantic and sentimental nature of the poem. 

9. Distinct Forms

There are a variety of poetic forms, including sonnets, haikus, villanelles and odes. 

Haikus are a Japanese form of poetry characterised by their unique syllabic structure. Each haiku is composed of three lines, with five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, and five in the third. 

For example, here is one of the Japanese poet Bashō’s earliest haikus: 

“On a withered branch A crow has alighted; Nightfall in autumn.”

A villanelle is a French verse form consisting of five three-line stanzas and a final quatrain, with the first and third lines of the first stanza repeating alternately in the following stanzas.

What Is Prose?

Prose is a form of written language without the metrical structure and formal patterns that characterise poetry. 

What are the key elements that characterise prose? 

1. narrative and exposition.

Prose is commonly used to convey information, tell stories and provide explanations, making it a versatile form of written expression. All novels are examples of the prose form. 

Think of the Harry Potter series. Through prose, we’re told the story of a young boy who discovers he is a wizard, attends the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, meets his friends, learns spells and battles Voldemort. 

As a versatile form, prose doesn’t just tell stories. It can convey other types of information through news articles, recipes or school essays.

2. Full Sentences and Paragraphs

Prose adheres to grammatical and syntactical rules, consisting of complete sentences and paragraphs. This is in direct contrast with poetry’s experimentation with rhythm, line breaks and metre. 

3. Lack of Rhyme and Metre

There’s generally a notable absence of specific rhythmic patterns and structured metre in prose. This allows for a more fluid and natural flow of language – just as I am writing now! 

For example, the prose form allows dialogue in novels to feel natural and real. This extract from Ernest Hemingway’s Hills like White Elephants is a great example, as the dialogue effectively bounces back and forth between characters.

‘“Well,” the man said, “if you don’t want to you don’t have to. I wouldn’t have you do it if you didn’t want to. But I know it’s perfectly simple.”   “And you really want to?”   “I think it’s the best thing to do. But I don’t want you to do it if you really don’t want to.”   “And if I do it you’ll be happy and things will be like they were and you’ll love me?”   “I love you now. You know I love you.”   “I know. But if I do it, then it will be nice again if I say things are like white elephants, and you’ll like it?”   “I’ll love it. I love it now but I just can’t think about it. You know how I get when I worry.”   “If I do it you won’t ever worry?”   “I won’t worry about that because it’s perfectly simple.”’

4. Concise and Detailed

Prose can be both concise and straightforward to deliver a message (for example a how-to guide), or descriptive and detailed to depict scenes and characters in literature. 

See the opening of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre : 

“There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question.”

5. Logical and Coherent

Prose is generally organised logically with a coherent development of ideas. This means it’s very suitable for persuasive writing, argument and clarity. 

See any of Barack Obama’s speeches – he’s a skilled and persuasive writer and speaker, able to use language to suit his purpose and audience. 

6. Linear Narrative

Prose often follows a linear narrative structure, progressing chronologically from beginning to middle to end, while making use of narrative techniques. 

For example, tragedies often adhere to Freytag’s Pyramid, which follows the structure: 

• Introduction, 
• Rise, or rising action 
• Return, or fall
• Catastrophe

This formula is based upon the classical Greek tragedies of Sophocles , Aeschylus and Euripedes .

7. Versatility

Prose adapts to a wide range of genres and styles from creative fiction to academic research papers to a newspaper column. It’s the primary, and most versatile, form of written communication.

Blurring Boundaries Between Poetry and Prose

Although there are many differences between poetry and prose, these distinctions can sometimes blur. 

There are hybrid forms of writing which incorporate elements of both styles. For example, the French poet Charles Baudelaire revolutionised poetry in his prose poems, combining elements of both styles. Rather than incorporating line breaks, rhyme schemes, control of metre or assonance, Baudelaire employed conventions of prose writing such as paragraphs and dialogue. 

This created a condensed version of prose that took advantage of poetic devices like symbolism and imagery. Take a look at Baudelaire’s Be Drunk : 

“And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . . ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: “It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish.”

Other writers who blur this boundary include Claudia Rankine, whose novel ​ Citizen showcases her prose-poetry hybrid. Her work has been called “lyric essays” by the New York Review of Books . 

Ocean Vuong’s acclaimed works, strikingly Time Is A Mother , also experiment with poetry and prose to explore grief, loss and memory.

There are many, many more canonical writers that blur this boundary, like Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath – all well worth exploring in depth!

Language is clearly not concrete, nor unchanging. Poets and novelists alike are always experimenting with form, technique and style. 

Be inspired to engage and experiment with a range of literary works, from confessional poetry to postmodernist literature to Baudelaire’s subversive prose poetry! Our summer programmes are hosted in Oxford, home to countless great writers over the centuries, and allow you to explore both poetry and prose in a supportive environment.

By Keziah Mccann

Keziah is a second-year French and Italian student at Balliol College, University of Oxford. As well as learning languages and travelling, her interests include writing, journalism, film and cooking.

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Poems & Poets

A Defence of Poetry

BY Percy Bysshe Shelley

Introduction

Percy Bysshe Shelley was born to a wealthy family in Sussex, England. He attended Eton and Oxford, where he was expelled for writing a pamphlet championing atheism. Shelley married twice before he drowned in a sailing accident in Italy at the age of 29. His first wife committed suicide, and shortly thereafter he married his second wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who was the author of Frankenstein and the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Among Shelley’s closest friends were the other famous Romantic poets of the day, among them John Keats, whose death inspired Shelley’s “Adonais,” and Lord Byron. Shelley’s “Defence of Poetry” is unusual compared with similarly titled “defenses” of poetry. Shelley’s essay contains no rules for poetry, or aesthetic judgments of his contemporaries. Instead, Shelley’s philosophical assumptions about poets and poetry can be read as a sort of primer for the Romantic movement in general. In this essay, written a year before his death, Shelley addresses “The Four Ages of Poetry,” a witty magazine piece by his friend, Thomas Love Peacock. Peacock’s work teases and jokes through its definitions and conclusions, specifically that the poetry has become valueless and redundant in an age of science and technology, and that intelligent people should give up their literary pursuits and put their intelligence to good use. Shelley takes this treatise and extends it, turning his essay into more of a rebuttal than a reply. To begin, Shelley turns to reason and imagination, defining reason as logical thought and imagination as perception, adding, “reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things.” From reason and imagination, man may recognize beauty, and it is through beauty that civilization comes. Language, Shelley contends, shows humanity’s impulse toward order and harmony, which leads to an appreciation of unity and beauty. Those in “excess” of language are the poets, whose task it is to impart the pleasures of their experience and observations into poems. Shelley argues, that civilization advances and thrives with the help of poetry. This assumption then, through Shelley’s own understanding, marks the poet as a prophet, not a man dispensing forecasts but a person who “participates in the eternal, the infinite, and the one.” He goes on to place poetry in the column of divine and organic process: “A poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth . . . the creation of actions according to the unchangeable forms of human nature, as existing in the mind of the Creator.” The task of poets then is to interpret and present the poem; Shelley’s metaphor here explicates: “Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.” The next portion of Shelley’s argument approaches the question of morality in poetry. To Shelley, poetry is utilitarian, as it brings civilization by “awaken[ing] and enlarg[ing] the mind itself by rendering it the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought. Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world.” Shelley also addresses drama and the critical history of poetry through the ages, beginning with the classical period, moving through the Christian era, and into the middle ages until he arrives back in his present day, pronouncing the worth of poets and poetry as “indeed divine,” and the significant role that poets play, concluding with his famous last line: “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”

According to one mode of regarding those two classes of mental action, which are called reason and imagination, the former may be considered as mind contemplating the relations borne by one thought to another, however produced, and the latter, as mind acting upon those thoughts so as to color them with its own light, and composing from them, as from elements, other thoughts, each containing within itself the principle of its own integrity. The one is the το ποιειν, or the principle of synthesis, and has for its objects those forms which are common to universal nature and existence itself; the other is the το λογιςειν, or principle of analysis, and its action regards the relations of things simply as relations; considering thoughts, not in their integral unity, but as the algebraical representations which conduct to certain general results. Reason is the enumeration of qualities already known; imagination is the perception of the value of those qualities, both separately and as a whole. Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things. Reason is to imagination as the instrument to the agent, as the body to the spirit, as the shadow to the substance.

Poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be “the expression of the imagination”: and poetry is connate with the origin of man. Man is an instrument over which a series of external and internal impressions are driven, like the alternations of an ever-changing wind over an Æolian lyre, which move it by their motion to ever-changing melody. But there is a principle within the human being, and perhaps within all sentient beings, which acts otherwise than in the lyre, and produces not melody alone, but harmony, by an internal adjustment of the sounds or motions thus excited to the impressions which excite them. It is as if the lyre could accommodate its chords to the motions of that which strikes them, in a determined proportion of sound; even as the musician can accommodate his voice to the sound of the lyre. A child at play by itself will express its delight by its voice and motions; and every inflexion of tone and every gesture will bear exact relation to a corresponding antitype in the pleasurable impressions which awakened it; it will be the reflected image of that impression; and as the lyre trembles and sounds after the wind has died away; so the child seeks, by prolonging in its voice and motions the duration of the effect, to prolong also a consciousness of the cause. In relation to the objects which delight a child these expressions are what poetry is to higher objects. The savage (for the savage is to ages what the child is to years) expresses the emotions produced in him by surrounding objects in a similar manner; and language and gesture, together with plastic or pictorial imitation, become the image of the combined effect of those objects, and of his apprehension of them. Man in society, with all his passions and his pleasures, next becomes the object of the passions and pleasures of man; an additional class of emotions produces an augmented treasure of expressions; and language, gesture, and the imitative arts, become at once the representation and the medium, the pencil and the picture, the chisel and the statute, the chord and the harmony. The social sympathies, or those laws from which, as from its elements, society results, begin to develop themselves from the moment that two human beings coexist; the future is contained within the present, as the plant within the seed; and equality, diversity, unity, contrast, mutual dependence, become the principles alone capable of affording the motives according to which the will of a social being is determined to action, inasmuch as he is social; and constitute pleasure in sensation, virtue in sentiment, beauty in art, truth in reasoning, and love in the intercourse of kind. Hence men, even in the infancy of society, observe a certain order in their words and actions, distinct from that of the objects and the impressions represented by them, all expression being subject to the laws of that from which it proceeds. But let us dismiss those more general considerations which might involve an inquiry into the principles of society itself, and restrict our view to the manner in which the imagination is expressed upon its forms.

In the youth of the world, men dance and sing and imitate natural objects observing in these actions, as in all others, a certain rhythm or order. And, although all men observe a similar, they observe not the same order, in the motions of the dance, in the melody of the song, in the combinations of language, in the series of their imitations of natural objects. For there is a certain order or rhythm belonging to each of these classes of mimetic representation, from which the hearer and the spectator receive an intenser and purer pleasure than from any other: the sense of an approximation to this order has been called taste by modern writers. Every man in the infancy of art observes an order which approximates more or less closely to that from which this highest delight results: but the diversity is not sufficiently marked, as that its gradations should be sensible, except in those instances where the predominance of this faculty of approximation to the beautiful (for so we may be permitted to name the relation between this highest pleasure and its cause) is very great. Those in whom it exists in excess are poets, in the most universal sense of the word; and the pleasure resulting from the manner in which they express the influence of society or nature upon their own minds, communicates itself to others, and gathers a sort of reduplication from that community. Their language is vitally metaphorical; that is, it marks the before unapprehended relations of things and perpetuates their apprehension, until the words which represent them, become, through time, signs for portions or classes of thoughts instead of pictures of integral thoughts; and then if no new poets should arise to create afresh the associations which have been thus disorganized, language will be dead to all the nobler purposes of human intercourse. These similitudes or relations are finely said by Lord Bacon to be “the same footsteps of nature impressed upon the various subjects of the world” [“De Augment. Scient.,” cap. i, lib. iii—Shelley]—and he considers the faculty which perceives them as the store-house of axioms common to all knowledge. In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet, because language itself is poetry; and to be a poet is to apprehend the true and the beautiful, in a word, the good which exists in the relation, subsisting, first between existence and perception, and secondly between perception and expression. Every original language near to its source is in itself the chaos of a cyclic poem: the copiousness of lexicography and the distinctions of grammar are the works of a later age, and are merely the catalogue and the form of the creations of poetry.

But poets, or those who imagine and express this indestructible order, are not only the authors of language and of music, of the dance, and architecture, and statuary, and painting: they are the institutors of laws, and the founders of civil society, and the inventors of the arts of life, and the teachers, who draw into a certain propinquity with the beautiful and the true that partial apprehension of the agencies of the invisible world which is called religion. Hence all original religions are allegorical, or susceptible of allegory, and, like Janus, have a double face of false and true. Poets, according to the circumstances of the age and nation in which they appeared, were called, in the earlier epochs of the world, legislators, or prophets: a poet essentially comprises and unites both these characters. For he not only beholds intensely the present as it is, and discovers those laws according to which present things ought to be ordered, but he beholds the future in the present, and his thoughts are the germs of the flower and the fruit of latest time. Not that I assert poets to be prophets in the gross sense of the word, or that they can foretell the form as surely as they foreknow the spirit of events: such is the pretence of superstition, which would make poetry an attribute of prophecy, rather than prophecy an attribute of poetry. A poet participates in the eternal, the infinite, and the one; as far as relates to his conceptions, time and place and number are not. The grammatical forms which express the moods of time, and the difference of persons, and the distinction of place, are convertible with respect to the highest poetry without injuring it as poetry; and the choruses of Aeschylus, and the book of Job, and Dante’s “Paradise” would afford, more than any other writings, examples of this fact, if the limits of this essay did not forbid citation. The creations of sculpture, painting, and music are illustrations still more decisive.

Language, color, form, and religious and civil habits of action, are all the instruments and materials of poetry; they may be called poetry by that figure of speech which considers the effect as a synonym of the cause. But poetry in a more restricted sense expresses those arrangements of language, and especially metrical language, which are created by that imperial faculty, whose throne is curtained within the invisible nature of man. And this springs from the nature itself of language, which is a more direct representation of the actions and passions of our internal being, and is susceptible of more various and delicate combinations, than color, form, or motion, and is more plastic and obedient to the control of that faculty of which it is the creation. For language is arbitrarily produced by the imagination, and has relation to thoughts alone; but all other materials, instruments, and conditions of art have relations among each other, which limit and interpose between conception and expression. The former is as a mirror which reflects, the latter as a cloud which enfeebles, the light of which both are mediums of communication. Hence the fame of sculptors, painters, and musicians, although the intrinsic powers of the great masters of these arts may yield in no degree to that of those who have employed language as the hieroglyphic of their thoughts, has never equalled that of poets in the restricted sense of the term; as two performers of equal skill will produce unequal effects from a guitar and a harp. The fame of legislators and founders of religions, so long as their institutions last, alone seems to exceed that of poets in the restricted sense; but it can scarcely be a question, whether, if we deduct the celebrity which their flattery of the gross opinions of the vulgar usually conciliates, together with that which belonged to them in their higher character of poets, any excess will remain.

We have thus circumscribed the word poetry within the limits of that art which is the most familiar and the most perfect expression of the faculty itself. It is necessary, however, to make the circle still narrower, and to determine the distinction between measured and unmeasured language; for the popular division into prose and verse is inadmissible in accurate philosophy.

Sounds as well as thoughts have relation both between each other and towards that which they represent, and a perception of the order of those relations has always been found connected with a perception of the order of the relations of thoughts. Hence the language of poets has ever affected a certain uniform and harmonious recurrence of sound, without which it were not poetry, and which is scarcely less indispensable to the communication of its influence, than the words themselves, without reference to that peculiar order. Hence the vanity of translation; it were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its color and odor, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower—and this is the burden of the curse of Babel.

An observation of the regular mode of the recurrence of harmony in the language of poetical minds, together with its relation to music, produced metre, or a certain system of traditional forms of harmony and language. Yet it is by no means essential that a poet should accommodate his language to this traditional form, so that the harmony, which is its spirit, be observed. The practice is indeed convenient and popular, and to be preferred, especially in such composition as includes much action: but every great poet must inevitably innovate upon the example of his predecessors in the exact structure of his peculiar versification. The distinction between poets and prose writers is a vulgar error. The distinction between philosophers and poets has been anticipated. Plato was essentially a poet—the truth and splendor of his imagery, and the melody of his language, are the most intense that it is possible to conceive. He rejected the measure of the epic, dramatic, and lyrical forms, because he sought to kindle a harmony in thoughts divested of shape and action, and he forebore to invent any regular plan of rhythm which would include, under determinate forms, the varied pauses of his style. Cicero sought to imitate the cadence of his periods, but with little success. Lord Bacon was a poet. [See the “Filum Labyrinthi,” and the “Essay on Death” particularly.—Shelley] His language has a sweet and majestic rhythm, which satisfies the sense, no less than the almost superhuman wisdom of his philosophy satisfies the intellect; it is a strain which distends, and then bursts the circumference of the reader’s mind, and pours itself forth together with it into the universal element with which it has perpetual sympathy. All the authors of revolutions in opinion are not only necessarily poets as they are inventors, nor even as their words unveil the permanent analogy of things by images which participate in the life of truth; but as their periods are harmonious and rhythmical, and contain in themselves the elements of verse; being the echo of the eternal music. Nor are those supreme poets, who have employed traditional forms of rhythm on account of the form and action of their subjects, less capable of perceiving and teaching the truth of things, than those who have omitted that form. Shakespeare, Dante, and Milton (to confine ourselves to modern writers) are philosophers of the very loftiest power.

A poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth. There is this difference between a story and a poem, that a story is a catalogue of detached facts, which have no other connection than time, place, circumstance, cause and effect; the other is the creation of actions according to the unchangeable forms of human nature, as existing in the mind of the Creator, which is itself the image of all other minds. The one is partial, and applies only to a definite period of time, and a certain combination of events which can never again recur; the other is universal, and contains within itself the germ of a relation to whatever motives or actions have place in the possible varieties of human nature. Time, which destroys the beauty and the use of the story of particular facts, stripped of the poetry which should invest them, augments that of poetry, and forever develops new and wonderful applications of the eternal truth which it contains. Hence epitomes have been called the moths of just history; they eat out the poetry of it. A story of particular facts is as a mirror which obscures and distorts that which should be beautiful; poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.

The parts of a composition may be poetical, without the composition as a whole being a poem. A single sentence may be considered as a whole, though it may be found in the midst of a series of unassimilated portions; a single word even may be a spark of inextinguishable thought. And thus all the great historians, Herodotus, Plutarch, Livy, were poets; and although the plan of these writers, especially that of Livy, restrained them from developing this faculty in its highest degree, they made copious and ample amends for their subjection, by filling all the interstices of their subjects with living images.

Having determined what is poetry, and who are poets, let us proceed to estimate its effects upon society.

Poetry is ever accompanied with pleasure: all spirits on which it falls open themselves to receive the wisdom which is mingled with its delight. In the infancy of the world, neither poets themselves nor their auditors are fully aware of the excellence of poetry: for it acts in a divine and unapprehended manner, beyond and above consciousness; and it is reserved for future generations to contemplate and measure the mighty cause and effect in all the strength and splendor of their union. Even in modern times, no living poet ever arrived at the fulness of his fame; the jury which sits in judgment upon a poet, belonging as he does to all time, must be composed of his peers: it must be impanelled by Time from the selectest of the wise of many generations. A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why. The poems of Homer and his contemporaries were the delight of infant Greece; they were the elements of that social system which is the column upon which all succeeding civilization has reposed. Homer embodied the ideal perfection of his age in human character; nor can we doubt that those who read his verses were awakened to an ambition of becoming like to Achilles, Hector, and Ulysses: the truth and beauty of friendship, patriotism, and persevering devotion to an object, were unveiled to the depths in these immortal creations: the sentiments of the auditors must have been refined and enlarged by a sympathy with such great and lovely impersonations, until from admiring they imitated, and from imitation they identified themselves with the objects of their admiration. Nor let it be objected that these characters are remote from moral perfection, and that they can by no means be considered as edifying patterns for general imitation. Every epoch, under names more or less specious, has deified its peculiar errors; Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age: and Self-deceit is the veiled image of unknown evil, before which luxury and satiety lie prostrate. But a poet considers the vices of his contemporaries as the temporary dress in which his creations must be arrayed, and which cover without concealing the eternal proportions of their beauty. An epic or dramatic personage is understood to wear them around his soul, as he may the ancient armor or the modern uniform around his body; whilst it is easy to conceive a dress more graceful than either. The beauty of the internal nature cannot be so far concealed by its accidental vesture, but that the spirit of its form shall communicate itself to the very disguise, and indicate the shape it hides from the manner in which it is worn. A majestic form and graceful motions will express themselves through the most barbarous and tasteless costume. Few poets of the highest class have chosen to exhibit the beauty of their conceptions in its naked truth and splendor; and it is doubtful whether the alloy of costume, habit, etc., be not necessary to temper this planetary music for mortal ears.

The whole objection, however, of the immorality of poetry rests upon a misconception of the manner in which poetry acts to produce the moral improvement of man. Ethical science arranges the elements which poetry has created, and propounds schemes and proposes examples of civil and domestic life: nor is it for want of admirable doctrines that men hate, and despise, and censure, and deceive, and subjugate one another. But poetry acts in another and diviner manner. It awakens and enlarges the mind itself by rendering it the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought. Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar; it reproduces all that it represents, and the impersonations clothed in its Elysian light stand thenceforward in the minds of those who have once contemplated them, as memorials of that gentle and exalted content which extends itself over all thoughts and actions with which it coexists. The great secret of morals is love; or a going out of our nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasure of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination; and poetry administers to the effect by acting upon the cause. Poetry enlarges the circumference of the imagination by replenishing it with thoughts of ever new delight, which have the power of attracting and assimilating to their own nature all other thoughts, and which form new intervals and interstices whose void forever craves fresh food. Poetry strengthens the faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of man, in the same manner as exercise strengthens a limb. A poet therefore would do ill to embody his own conceptions of right and wrong, which are usually those of his place and time, in his poetical creations, which participate in neither. By this assumption of the inferior office of interpreting the effect, in which perhaps after all he might acquit himself but imperfectly, he would resign a glory in a participation in the cause. There was little danger that Homer, or any of the eternal poets, should have so far misunderstood themselves as to have abdicated this throne of their widest dominion. Those in whom the poetical faculty, though great, is less intense, as Euripides, Lucan, Tasso, Spenser, have frequently affected a moral aim, and the effect of their poetry is diminished in exact proportion to the degree in which they compel us to advert to this purpose.

Homer and the cyclic poets were followed at a certain interval by the dramatic and lyrical poets of Athens, who flourished contemporaneously with all that is most perfect in the kindred expressions of the poetical faculty; architecture, painting, music, the dance, sculpture, philosophy, and, we may add, the forms of civil life. For although the scheme of Athenian society was deformed by many imperfections which the poetry existing in chivalry and Christianity has erased from the habits and institutions of modern Europe; yet never at any other period has so much energy, beauty, and virtue been developed; never was blind strength and stubborn form so disciplined and rendered subject to the will of man, or that will less repugnant to the dictates of the beautiful and the true, as during the century which preceded the death of Socrates. Of no other epoch in the history of our species have we records and fragments stamped so visibly with the image of the divinity in man. But it is poetry alone, in form, in action, or in language, which has rendered this epoch memorable above all others, and the store-house of examples to everlasting time. For written poetry existed at that epoch simultaneously with the other arts, and it is an idle inquiry to demand which gave and which received the light, which all, as from a common focus, have scattered over the darkest periods of succeeding time. We know no more of cause and effect than a constant conjunction of events: poetry is ever found to coexist with whatever other arts contribute to the happiness and perfection of man. I appeal to what has already been established to distinguish between the cause and the effect.

It was at the period here adverted to that the drama had its birth; and however a succeeding writer may have equalled or surpassed those few great specimens of the Athenian drama which have been preserved to us, it is indisputable that the art itself never was understood or practised according to the true philosophy of it, as at Athens. For the Athenians employed language, action, music, painting, the dance, and religious institutions, to produce a common effect in the representation of the highest idealism of passion and of power; each division in the art was made perfect in its kind of artists of the most consummate skill, and was disciplined into a beautiful proportion and unity one towards the other. On the modern stage a few only of the elements capable of expressing the image of the poet’s conception are employed at once. We have tragedy without music and dancing; and music and dancing without the highest impersonations of which they are the fit accompaniment, and both without religion and solemnity. Religious institution has indeed been usually banished from the stage. Our system of divesting the actor’s face of a mask, on which the many expressions appropriated to his dramatic character might be moulded into one permanent and unchanging expression, is favorable only to a partial and inharmonious effect; it is fit for nothing but a monologue, where all the attention may be directed to some great master of ideal mimicry. The modern practice of blending comedy with tragedy, though liable to great abuse in point of practice, is undoubtedly an extension of the dramatic circle; but the comedy should be as in King Lear , universal, ideal, and sublime. It is perhaps the intervention of this principle which determines the balance in favor of “King Lear” against the “Oedipus Tyrannus” or the “Agamemnon,” or, if you will, the trilogies with which they are connected; unless the intense power of the choral poetry, especially that of the latter, should be considered as restoring the equilibrium. King Lear , if it can sustain this comparison, may be judged to be the most perfect specimen of the dramatic art existing in the world; in spite of the narrow conditions to which the poet was subjected by the ignorance of the philosophy of the drama which has prevailed in modern Europe. Calderon, in his religious autos, has attempted to fulfil some of the high conditions of dramatic representation neglected by Shakespeare; such as the establishing a relation between the drama and religion, and the accommodating them to music and dancing; but he omits the observation of conditions still more important, and more is lost than gained by the substitution of the rigidly defined and ever-repeated idealisms of a distorted superstition for the living impersonations of the truth of human passion.

But I digress. The connection of scenic exhibitions with the improvement or corruption of the manners of men has been universally recognized; in other words, the presence or absence of poetry in its most perfect and universal form has been found to be connected with good and evil in conduct or habit. The corruption which has been imputed to the drama as an effect, begins, when the poetry employed in its constitution ends: I appeal to the history of manners whether the periods of the growth of the one and the decline of the other have not corresponded with an exactness equal to any example of moral cause and effect.

The drama at Athens, or wheresoever else it may have approached to its perfection, ever coexisted with the moral and intellectual greatness of the age. The tragedies of the Athenian poets are as mirrors in which the spectator beholds himself, under a thin disguise of circumstance, stripped of all but that ideal perfection and energy which everyone feels to be the internal type of all that he loves, admires, and would become. The imagination is enlarged by a sympathy with pains and passions so mighty, that they distend in their conception the capacity of that by which they are conceived; the good affections are strengthened by pity, indignation, terror, and sorrow; and an exalted calm is prolonged from the satiety of this high exercise of them into the tumult of familiar life: even crime is disarmed of half its horror and all its contagion by being represented as the fatal consequence of the unfathomable agencies of nature; error is thus divested of its wilfulness; men can no longer cherish it as the creation of their choice. In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure or hatred; it teaches rather self-knowledge and self-respect. Neither the eye nor the mind can see itself, unless reflected upon that which it resembles. The drama, so long as it continues to express poetry, is as a prismatic and many-sided mirror, which collects the brightest rays of human nature and divides and reproduces them from the simplicity of these elementary forms, and touches them with majesty and beauty, and multiplies all that it reflects, and endows it with the power of propagating its like wherever it may fall.

But in periods of the decay of social life, the drama sympathizes with that decay. Tragedy becomes a cold imitation of the form of the great masterpieces of antiquity, divested of all harmonious accompaniment of the kindred arts; and often the very form misunderstood, or a weak attempt to teach certain doctrines, which the writer considers as moral truths; and which are usually no more than specious flatteries of some gross vice or weakness, with which the author, in common with his auditors, are infected. Hence what has been called the classical and domestic drama. Addison’s “Cato” is a specimen of the one, and would it were not superfluous to cite examples of the other! To such purposes poetry cannot be made subservient. Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it. And thus we observe that all dramatic writings of this nature are unimaginative in a singular degree; they affect sentiment and passion, which, divested of imagination, are other names for caprice and appetite. The period in our own history of the grossest degradation of the drama is the reign of Charles II, when all forms in which poetry had been accustomed to be expressed became hymns to the triumph of kingly power over liberty and virtue. Milton stood alone illuminating an age unworthy of him. At such periods the calculating principle pervades all the forms of dramatic exhibition, and poetry ceases to be expressed upon them. Comedy loses its ideal universality: wit succeeds to humor; we laugh from self-complacency and triumph, instead of pleasure; malignity, sarcasm, and contempt succeed to sympathetic merriment; we hardly laugh, but we smile. Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy against the divine beauty in life, becomes, from the very veil which it assumes, more active if less disgusting: it is a monster for which the corruption of society forever brings forth new food, which it devours in secret.

The drama being that form under which a greater number of modes of expression of poetry are susceptible of being combined than any other, the connection of poetry and social good is more observable in the drama than in whatever other form. And it is indisputable that the highest perfection of human society has ever corresponded with the highest dramatic excellence; and that the corruption or the extinction of the drama in a nation where it has once flourished is a mark of a corruption of manners, and an extinction of the energies which sustain the soul of social life. But, as Machiavelli says of political institutions, that life may be preserved and renewed, if men should arise capable of bringing back the drama to its principles. And this is true with respect to poetry in its most extended sense: all language, institution, and form require not only to be produced but to be sustained: the office and character of a poet participate in the divine nature as regards providence, no less than as regards creation.

Civil war, the spoils of Asia, and the fatal predominance first of the Macedonian, and then of the Roman arms, were so many symbols of the extinction or suspension of the creative faculty in Greece. The bucolic writers, who found patronage under the lettered tyrants of Sicily and Egypt, were the latest representatives of its most glorious reign. Their poetry is intensely melodious; like the odor of the tuberose, it overcomes and sickens the spirit with excess of sweetness; whilst the poetry of the preceding age was as a meadow-gale of June, which mingles the fragrance of all the flowers of the field, and adds a quickening and harmonizing spirit of its own which endows the sense with a power of sustaining its extreme delight. The bucolic and erotic delicacy in written poetry is correlative with that softness in statuary, music, and the kindred arts, and even in manners and institutions, which distinguished the epoch to which I now refer. Nor is it the poetical faculty itself, or any misapplication of it, to which this want of harmony is to be imputed. An equal sensibility to the influence of the senses and the affections is to be found in the writings of Homer and Sophocles: the former, especially, has clothed sensual and pathetic images with irresistible attractions. Their superiority over these succeeding writers consists in the presence of those thoughts which belong to the inner faculties of our nature, not in the absence of those which are connected with the external; their incomparable perfection consists in a harmony of the union of all. It is not what the erotic poets have, but what they have not, in which their imperfection consists. It is not inasmuch as they were poets, but inasmuch as they were not poets, that they can be considered with any plausibility as connected with the corruption of their age. Had that corruption availed so as to extinguish in them the sensibility to pleasure, passion, and natural scenery, which is imputed to them as an imperfection, the last triumph of evil would have been achieved. For the end of social corruption is to destroy all sensibility to pleasure; and, therefore, it is corruption. It begins at the imagination and the intellect as at the core, and distributes itself thence as a paralyzing venom, through the affections into the very appetites, until all become a torpid mass in which hardly sense survives. At the approach of such a period, poetry ever addresses itself to those faculties which are the last to be destroyed, and its voice is heard, like the footsteps of Astræa, departing from the world. Poetry ever communicates all the pleasure which men are capable of receiving: it is ever still the light of life; the source of whatever of beautiful or generous or true can have place in an evil time. It will readily be confessed that those among the luxurious citizens of Syracuse and Alexandria, who were delighted with the poems of Theocritus, were less cold, cruel, and sensual than the remnant of their tribe. But corruption must utterly have destroyed the fabric of human society before poetry can ever cease. The sacred links of that chain have never been entirely disjoined, which descending through the minds of many men is attached to those great minds, whence as from a magnet the invisible effluence is sent forth, which at once connects, animates, and sustains the life of all. It is the faculty which contains within itself the seeds at once of its own and of social renovation. And let us not circumscribe the effects of the bucolic and erotic poetry within the limits of the sensibility of those to whom it was addressed. They may have perceived the beauty of those immortal compositions, simply as fragments and isolated portions: those who are more finely organized, or born in a happier age, may recognize them as episodes to that great poem, which all poets, like the co-operating thoughts of one great mind, have built up since the beginning of the world.

The same revolutions within a narrower sphere had place in ancient Rome; but the actions and forms of its social life never seem to have been perfectly saturated with the poetical element. The Romans appear to have considered the Greeks as the selectest treasuries of the selectest forms of manners and of nature, and to have abstained from creating in measured language, sculpture, music, or architecture, anything which might bear a particular relation to their own condition, whilst it should bear a general one to the universal constitution of the world. But we judge from partial evidence, and we judge perhaps partially. Ennius, Varro, Pacuvius, and Accius, all great poets, have been lost. Lucretius is in the highest, and Virgil in a very high sense, a creator. The chosen delicacy of expressions of the latter are as a mist of light which conceal from us the intense and exceeding truth of his conceptions of nature. Livy is instinct with poetry. Yet Horace, Catullus, Ovid, and generally the other great writers of the Vergilian age, saw man and nature in the mirror of Greece. The institutions also, and the religion of Rome, were less poetical than those of Greece, as the shadow is less vivid than the substance. Hence poetry in Rome seemed to follow, rather than accompany, the perfection of political and domestic society. The true poetry of Rome lived in its institutions; for whatever of beautiful, true, and majestic, they contained, could have sprung only from the faculty which creates the order in which they consist. The life of Camillus, the death of Regulus; the expectation of the senators, in their godlike state, of the victorious Gauls; the refusal of the republic to make peace with Hannibal, after the battle of Cannæ, were not the consequences of a refined calculation of the probable personal advantage to result from such a rhythm and order in the shows of life, to those who were at once the poets and the actors of these immortal dramas. The imagination beholding the beauty of this order, created it out of itself according to its own idea; the consequence was empire, and the reward ever-living fame. These things are not the less poetry, quia carent vate sacro [because they lack the sacred prophet (or divine poet)—ed.]. They are the episodes of that cyclic poem written by Time upon the memories of men. The Past, like an inspired rhapsodist, fills the theatre of everlasting generations with their harmony.

At length the ancient system of religion and manners had fulfilled the circle of its revolutions. And the world would have fallen into utter anarchy and darkness, but that there were found poets among the authors of the Christian and chivalric systems of manners and religion, who created forms of opinion and action never before conceived; which, copied into the imaginations of men, became as generals to the bewildered armies of their thoughts. It is foreign to the present purpose to touch upon the evil produced by these systems: except that we protest, on the ground of the principles already established, that no portion of it can be attributed to the poetry they contain.

It is probable that the poetry of Moses, Job, David, Solomon, and Isaiah had produced a great effect upon the mind of Jesus and his disciples. The scattered fragments preserved to us by the biographers of this extraordinary person are all instinct with the most vivid poetry. But his doctrines seem to have been quickly distorted. At a certain period after the prevalence of a system of opinions founded upon those promulgated by him, the three forms into which Plato had distributed the faculties of mind underwent a sort of apotheosis, and became the object of the worship of the civilized world. Here it is to be confessed that “Light seems to thicken,” and

The crow makes wing to the rooky wood, Good things of day begin to droop and drowse, And night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.

But mark how beautiful an order has sprung from the dust and blood of this fierce chaos! how the world, as from a resurrection, balancing itself on the golden wings of Knowledge and of Hope, has reassumed its yet unwearied flight into the heaven of time. Listen to the music, unheard by outward ears, which is as a ceaseless and invisible wind, nourishing its everlasting course with strength and swiftness.

The poetry in the doctrines of Jesus Christ, and the mythology and institutions of the Celtic conquerors of the Roman Empire, outlived the darkness and the convulsions connected with their growth and victory, and blended themselves in a new fabric of manners and opinion. It is an error to impute the ignorance of the dark ages to the Christian doctrines or the predominance of the Celtic nations. Whatever of evil their agencies may have contained sprang from the extinction of the poetical principle, connected with the progress of despotism and superstition. Men, from causes too intricate to be here discussed, had become insensible and selfish: their own will had become feeble, and yet they were its slaves, and thence the slaves of the will of others: lust, fear, avarice, cruelty, and fraud, characterized a race amongst whom no one was to be found capable of creating in form, language, or institution. The moral anomalies of such a state of society are not justly to be charged upon any class of events immediately connected with them, and those events are most entitled to our approbation which could dissolve it most expeditiously. It is unfortunate for those who cannot distinguish words from thoughts, that many of these anomalies have been incorporated into our popular religion.

It was not until the eleventh century that the effects of the poetry of the Christian and chivalric systems began to manifest themselves. The principle of equality had been discovered and applied by Plato in his Republic as the theoretical rule of the mode in which the materials of pleasure and of power produced by the common skill and labor of human beings ought to be distributed among them. The limitations of this rule were asserted by him to be determined only by the sensibility of each, or the utility to result to all. Plato, following the doctrines of Timæus and Pythagoras, taught also a moral and intellectual system of doctrine, comprehending at once the past, the present, and the future condition of man. Jesus Christ divulged the sacred and eternal truths contained in these views to mankind, and Christianity, in its abstract purity, became the exoteric expression of the esoteric doctrines of the poetry and wisdom of antiquity. The incorporation of the Celtic nations with the exhausted population of the south impressed upon it the figure of the poetry existing in their mythology and institutions. The result was a sum of the action and reaction of all the causes included in it; for it may be assumed as a maxim that no nation or religion can supersede any other without incorporating into itself a portion of that which it supersedes. The abolition of personal and domestic slavery, and the emancipation of women from a great part of the degrading restraints of antiquity, were among the consequences of these events.

The abolition of personal slavery is the basis of the highest political hope that it can enter into the mind of man to conceive. The freedom of women produced the poetry of sexual love. Love became a religion, the idols of whose worship were ever present. It was as if the statues of Apollo and the Muses had been endowed with life and motion, and had walked forth among their worshippers; so that earth became peopled with the inhabitants of a diviner world. The familiar appearance and proceedings of life became wonderful and heavenly, and a paradise was created as out of the wrecks of Eden. And as this creation itself is poetry, so its creators were poets; and language was the instrument of their art: “Galeotto fù il libro, e chi lo scrisse” [“Galeotto was the book and the one who wrote it”—ed.]. The Provençal Trouveurs, or inventors, preceded Petrarch, whose verses are as spells, which unseal the inmost enchanted fountains of the delight which is in the grief of love. It is impossible to feel them without becoming a portion of that beauty which we contemplate: it were superfluous to explain how the gentleness and the elevation of mind connected with these sacred emotions can render men more amiable, more generous and wise, and lift them out of the dull vapors of the little world of self. Dante understood the secret things of love even more than Petrarch. His Vita Nuova is an inexhaustible fountain of purity of sentiment and language: it is the idealized history of that period, and those intervals of his life which were dedicated to love. His apotheosis of Beatrice in Paradise, and the gradations of his own love and her loveliness, by which as by steps he feigns himself to have ascended to the throne of the Supreme Cause, is the most glorious imagination of modern poetry. The acutest critics have justly reversed the judgment of the vulgar, and the order of the great acts of the “Divine Drama,” in the measure of the admiration which they accord to the Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. The latter is a perpetual hymn of everlasting love. Love, which found a worthy poet in Plato alone of all the ancients, has been celebrated by a chorus of the greatest writers of the renovated world; and the music has penetrated the caverns of society, and its echoes still drown the dissonance of arms and superstition. At successive intervals, Ariosto, Tasso, Shakespeare, Spenser, Calderon, Rousseau, and the great writers of our own age, have celebrated the dominion of love, planting as it were trophies in the human mind of that sublimest victory over sensuality and force. The true relation borne to each other by the sexes into which humankind is distributed has become less misunderstood; and if the error which confounded diversity with inequality of the powers of the two sexes has been partially recognised in the opinions and institutions of modern Europe, we owe this great benefit to the worship of which chivalry was the law, and poets the prophets.

The poetry of Dante may be considered as the bridge thrown over the stream of time, which unites the modern and ancient world. The distorted notions of invisible things which Dante and his rival Milton have idealized, are merely the mask and the mantle in which these great poets walk through eternity enveloped and disguised. It is a difficult question to determine how far they were conscious of the distinction which must have subsisted in their minds between their own creeds and that of the people. Dante at least appears to wish to mark the full extent of it by placing Rhipæus, whom Vergil calls justissimus unus [the one most just—ed.], in Paradise, and observing a most heretical caprice in his distribution of rewards and punishments. And Milton’s poem contains within itself a philosophical refutation of that system, of which, by a strange and natural antithesis, it has been a chief popular support. Nothing can exceed the energy and magnificence of the character of Satan as expressed in Paradise Lost . It is a mistake to suppose that he could ever have been intended for the popular personification of evil. Implacable hate, patient cunning, and a sleepless refinement of device to inflict the extremist anguish on an enemy, these things are evil; and, although venial in a slave, are not to be forgiven in a tyrant; although redeemed by much that ennobles his defeat in one subdued, are marked by all that dishonors his conquest in the victor. Milton’s Devil as a moral being is as far superior to his God, as one who perseveres in some purpose which he has conceived to be excellent in spite of adversity and torture, is to one who in the cold security of undoubted triumph inflicts the most horrible revenge upon his enemy, not from any mistaken notion of inducing him to repent of a perseverance in enmity, but with the alleged design of exasperating him to deserve new torments. Milton has so far violated the popular creed (if this shall be judged to be a violation) as to have alleged no superiority of moral virtue to his God over his Devil. And this bold neglect of a direct moral purpose is the most decisive proof of the supremacy of Milton’s genius. He mingled as it were the elements of human nature as colors upon a single pallet, and arranged them in the composition of his great picture according to the laws of epic truth; that is, according to the laws of that principle by which a series of actions of the external universe and of intelligent and ethical beings is calculated to excite the sympathy of succeeding generations of mankind. The Divina Commedia and Paradise Lost have conferred upon modern mythology a systematic form; and when change and time shall have added one more superstition to the mass of those which have arisen and decayed upon the earth, commentators will be learnedly employed in elucidating the religion of ancestral Europe, only not utterly forgotten because it will have been stamped with the eternity of genius.

Homer was the first and Dante the second epic poet: that is, the second poet, the series of whose creations bore a defined and intelligible relation to the knowledge and sentiment and religion of the age in which he lived, and of the ages which followed it, developing itself in correspondence with their development. For Lucretius had limed the wings of his swift spirit in the dregs of the sensible world; and Vergil, with a modesty that ill became his genius, had affected the fame of an imitator, even whilst he created anew all that he copied; and none among the flock of mock-birds, though their notes were sweet, Apollonius Rhodius, Quintus Calaber, Nonnus, Lucan, Statius, or Claudian, have sought even to fulfil a single condition of epic truth. Milton was the third epic poet. For if the title of epic in its highest sense be refused to the “Aeneid,” still less can it be conceded to the “Orlando Furioso,” the “Gerusalemme Liberata,” the “Lusiad,” or the “Faerie Queene.”

Dante and Milton were both deeply penetrated with the ancient religion of the civilized world; and its spirit exists in their poetry probably in the same proportion as its forms survived in the unreformed worship of modern Europe. The one preceded and the other followed the Reformation at almost equal intervals. Dante was the first religious reformer, and Luther surpassed him rather in the rudeness and acrimony than in the boldness of his censures of papal usurpation. Dante was the first awakener of entranced Europe; he created a language, in itself music and persuasion, out of a chaos of inharmonious barbarians. He was the congregator of those great spirits who presided over the resurrection of learning; the Lucifer of that starry flock which in the thirteenth century shone forth from republican Italy, as from a heaven, into the darkness of the benighted world. His very words are instinct with spirit; each is as a spark, a burning atom of inextinguishable thought; and many yet lie covered in the ashes of their birth, and pregnant with the lightning which has yet found no conductor. All high poetry is infinite; it is as the first acorn, which contained all oaks potentially. Veil after veil may be undrawn, and the inmost naked beauty of the meaning never exposed. A great poem is a fountain forever overflowing with the waters of wisdom and delight; and after one person and one age has exhausted all its divine effluence which their peculiar relations enable them to share, another and yet another succeeds, and new relations are ever developed, the source of an unforeseen and an unconceived delight.

The age immediately succeeding to that of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio was characterized by a revival of painting, sculpture, and architecture. Chaucer caught the sacred inspiration, and the superstructure of English literature is based upon the materials of Italian invention.

But let us not be betrayed from a defence into a critical history of poetry and its influence on society. Be it enough to have pointed out the effects of poets, in the large and true sense of the word, upon their own and all succeeding times.

But poets have been challenged to resign the civic crown to reasoners and mechanists, on another plea. It is admitted that the exercise of the imagination is most delightful, but it is alleged that that of reason is more useful. Let us examine as the grounds of this distinction what is here meant by utility. Pleasure or good, in a general sense, is that which the consciousness of a sensitive and intelligent being seeks, and in which, when found, it acquiesces. There are two kinds of pleasure, one durable, universal, and permanent; the other transitory and particular. Utility may either express the means of producing the former or the latter. In the former sense, whatever strengthens and purifies the affections, enlarges the imagination, and adds spirit to sense, is useful. But a narrower meaning may be assigned to the word utility, confining it to express that which banishes the importunity of the wants of our animal nature, the surrounding, men with security of life, the dispersing the grosser delusions of superstitions, and the conciliating such a degree of mutual forbearance among men as may consist with the motives of personal advantage.

Undoubtedly the promoters of utility, in this limited sense, have their appointed office in society. They follow the footsteps of poets, and copy the sketches of their creations into the book of common life. They make space, and give time. Their exertions are of the highest value, so long as they confine their administration of the concerns of the inferior powers of our nature within the limits due to the superior ones. But whilst the sceptic destroys gross superstitions, let him spare to deface, as some of the French writers have defaced, the eternal truths charactered upon the imaginations of men. Whilst the mechanist abridges, and the political economist combines labor, let them beware that their speculations, for want of correspondence with those first principles which belong to the imagination, do not tend, as they have in modern England, to exasperate at once the extremes of luxury and want. They have exemplified the saying, “To him that hath, more shall be given; and from him that hath not, the little that he hath shall be taken away.” The rich have become richer, and the poor have become poorer; and the vessel of the State is driven between the Scylla and Charybdis of anarchy and despotism. Such are the effects which must ever flow from an unmitigated exercise of the calculating faculty.

It is difficult to define pleasure in its highest sense; the definition involving a number of apparent paradoxes. For, from an inexplicable defect of harmony in the constitution of human nature, the pain of the inferior is frequently connected with the pleasures of the superior portions of our being. Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself, are often the chosen expressions of an approximation to the highest good. Our sympathy in tragic fiction depends on this principle; tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain. This is the source also of the melancholy which is inseparable from the sweetest melody. The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself. And hence the saying, “It is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of mirth.” Not that this highest species of pleasure is necessarily linked with pain. The delight of love and friendship, the ecstasy of the admiration of nature, the joy of the perception and still more of the creation of poetry, is often wholly unalloyed.

The production and assurance of pleasure in this highest sense is true utility. Those who produce and preserve this pleasure are poets or poetical philosophers.

The exertions of Locke, Hume, Gibbon, Voltaire, Rousseau [although Rousseau has been thus classed, he was essentially a poet. The others, even Voltaire, were mere reasoners.—Shelley’s note], and their disciples, in favor of oppressed and deluded humanity, are entitled to the gratitude of mankind. Yet it is easy to calculate the degree of moral and intellectual improvement which the world would have exhibited, had they never lived. A little more nonsense would have been talked for a century or two; and perhaps a few more men, women, and children burnt as heretics. We might not at this moment have been congratulating each other on the abolition of the Inquisition in Spain. But it exceeds all imagination to conceive what would have been the moral condition of the world if neither Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Calderon, Lord Bacon, nor Milton, had ever existed; if Raphael and Michael Angelo had never been born; if the Hebrew poetry had never been translated; if a revival of the study of Greek literature had never taken place; if no monuments of ancient sculpture had been handed down to us; and if the poetry of the religion of the ancient world had been extinguished together with its belief. The human mind could never, except by the intervention of these excitements, have been awakened to the invention of the grosser sciences, and that application of analytical reasoning to the aberrations of society, which it is now attempted to exalt over the direct expression of the inventive and creative faculty itself.

We have more moral, political, and historical wisdom than we know how to reduce into practice; we have more scientific and economical knowledge than can be accommodated to the just distribution of the produce which it multiplies. The poetry in these systems of thought is concealed by the accumulation of facts and calculating processes. There is no want of knowledge respecting what is wisest and best in morals, government, and political economy, or at least, what is wiser and better than what men now practise and endure. But we let I dare not wait upon I would , like the poor cat in the adage. We want the creative faculty to imagine that which we know; we want the generous impulse to act that which we imagine; we want the poetry of life; our calculations have outrun conception; we have eaten more than we can digest. The cultivation of those sciences which have enlarged the limits of the empire of man over the external world, has, for want of the poetical faculty, proportionally circumscribed those of the internal world; and man, having enslaved the elements, remains himself a slave. To what but a cultivation of the mechanical arts in a degree disproportioned to the presence of the creative faculty, which is the basis of all knowledge, is to be attributed the abuse of all invention for abridging and combining labor, to the exasperation of the inequality of mankind? From what other cause has it arisen that the discoveries which should have lightened, have added a weight to the curse imposed on Adam? Poetry, and the principle of Self, of which money is the visible incarnation, are the God and Mammon of the world.

The functions of the poetical faculty are twofold: by one it creates new materials of knowledge, and power, and pleasure; by the other it engenders in the mind a desire to reproduce and arrange them according to a certain rhythm and order which may be called the beautiful and the good. The cultivation of poetry is never more to be desired than at periods when, from an excess of the selfish and calculating principle, the accumulation of the materials of external life exceed the quantity of the power of assimilating them to the internal laws of human nature. The body has then become too unwidely for that which animates it.

Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the centre and circumference of knowledge; it is that which comprehends all science, and that to which all science must be referred. It is at the same time the root and blossom of all other systems of thought; it is that from which all spring, and that which adorns all; and that which, if blighted, denies the fruit and the seed, and withholds from the barren world the nourishment and the succession of the scions of the tree of life. It is the perfect and consummate surface and bloom of all things; it is as the odor and the color of the rose to the texture of the elements which compose it, as the form and splendor of unfaded beauty to the secrets of anatomy and corruption. What were virtue, love, patriotism, friendship—what were the scenery of this beautiful universe which we inhabit; what were our consolations on this side of the grave—and what were our aspirations beyond it, if poetry did not ascend to bring light and fire from those eternal regions where the owl-winged faculty of calculation dare not ever soar? Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, “I will compose poetry.” The greatest poet even cannot say it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises from within, like the color of a flower which fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure. Could this influence be durable in its original purity and force, it is impossible to predict the greatness of the results; but when composition begins, inspiration is already on the decline, and the most glorious poetry that has ever been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conceptions of the poet. I appeal to the greatest poets of the present day, whether it is not an error to assert that the finest passages of poetry are produced by labor and study. The toil and the delay recommended by critics can be justly interpreted to mean no more than a careful observation of the inspired moments, and an artificial connection of the spaces between their suggestions by the intertexture of conventional expressions; a necessity only imposed by the limitedness of the poetical faculty itself; for Milton conceived the “Paradise Lost” as a whole before he executed it in portions. We have his own authority also for the Muse having “dictated” to him the “unpremeditated song.” And let this be an answer to those who would allege the fifty-six various readings of the first line of the “Orlando Furioso.” Compositions so produced are to poetry what mosaic is to painting. This instinct and intuition of the poetical faculty are still more observable in the plastic and pictorial arts; a great statue or picture grows under the power of the artist as a child in a mother’s womb; and the very mind which directs the hands in formation is incapable of accounting to itself for the origin, the gradations, or the media of the process.

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds. We are aware of evanescent visitations of thought and feeling sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes regarding our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and departing unbidden, but elevating and delightful beyond all expression: so that even in the desire and the regret they leave, there cannot but be pleasure, participating as it does in the nature of its object. It is as it were the interpretation of a diviner nature through our own; but its footsteps are like those of a wind over the sea, which the coming calm erases, and whose traces remain only as on the wrinkled sand which paves it. These and corresponding conditions of being are experienced principally by those of the most delicate sensibility and the most enlarged imagination; and the state of mind produced by them is at war with every base desire. The enthusiasm of virtue, love, patriotism, and friendship is essentially linked with such emotions; and whilst they last, self appears as what it is, an atom to a universe. Poets are not only subject to these experiences as spirits of the most refined organization, but they can color all that they combine with the evanescent hues of this ethereal world; a word, a trait in the representation of a scene or a passion will touch the enchanted chord, and reanimate, in those who have ever experienced these emotions, the sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past. Poetry thus makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world; it arrests the vanishing apparitions which haunt the interlunations of life, and veiling them, or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind, bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom their sisters abide—abide, because there is no portal of expression from the caverns of the spirit which they inhabit into the universe of things. Poetry redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man.

Poetry turns all things to loveliness; it exalts the beauty of that which is most beautiful, and it adds beauty to that which is most deformed; it marries exultation and horror, grief and pleasure, eternity and change; it subdues to union under its light yoke all irreconcilable things. It transmutes all that it touches, and every form moving within the radiance of its presence is changed by wondrous sympathy to an incarnation of the spirit which it breathes: its secret alchemy turns to potable gold the poisonous waters which flow from death through life; it strips the veil of familiarity from the world, and lays bare the naked and sleeping beauty, which is the spirit of its forms.

All things exist as they are perceived: at least in relation to the percipient. “The mind is its own place, and of itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” But poetry defeats the curse which binds us to be subjected to the accident of surrounding impressions. And whether it spreads its own figured curtain, or withdraws life’s dark veil from before the scene of things, it equally creates for us a being within our being. It makes us the inhabitants of a world to which the familiar world is a chaos. It reproduces the common universe of which we are portions and percipients, and it purges from our inward sight the film of familiarity which obscures from us the wonder of our being. It compels us to feel that which we perceive, and to imagine that which we know. It creates anew the universe, after it has been annihilated in our minds by the recurrence of impressions blunted by reiteration. It justifies the bold and true words of Tasso—“Non merita nome di creatore, se non Iddio ed il Poeta” [none but God and the poet deserve the name of Creator—ed.].

A poet, as he is the author to others of the highest wisdom, pleasure, virtue, and glory, so he ought personally to be the happiest, the best, the wisest, and the most illustrious of men. As to his glory, let time be challenged to declare whether the fame of any other institutor of human life be comparable to that of a poet. That he is the wisest, the happiest, and the best, inasmuch as he is a poet, is equally incontrovertible: the greatest poets have been men of the most spotless virtue, of the most consummate prudence, and, if we would look into the interior of their lives, the most fortunate of men: and the exceptions, as they regard those who possessed the poetic faculty in a high yet inferior degree, will be found on consideration to confine rather than destroy the rule. Let us for a moment stoop to the arbitration of popular breath, and usurping and uniting in our own persons the incompatible characters of accuser, witness, judge, and executioner, let us decide without trial, testimony, or form, that certain motives of those who are “there sitting where we dare not soar,” are reprehensible. Let us assume that Homer was a drunkard, that Vergil was a flatterer, that Horace was a coward, that Tasso was a madman, that Lord Bacon was a peculator, that Raphael was a libertine, that Spenser was a poet laureate. It is inconsistent with this division of our subject to cite living poets, but posterity has done ample justice to the great names now referred to. Their errors have been weighed and found to have been dust in the balance; if their sins “were as scarlet, they are now white as snow”; they have been washed in the blood of the mediator and redeemer, Time. Observe in what a ludicrous chaos the imputations of real or fictitious crime have been confused in the contemporary calumnies against poetry and poets; consider how little is as it appears—or appears as it is; look to your own motives, and judge not, lest ye be judged.

Poetry, as has been said, differs in this respect from logic, that it is not subject to the control of the active powers of the mind, and that its birth and recurrence have no necessary connection with the consciousness or will. It is presumptuous to determine that these are the necessary conditions of all mental causation, when mental effects are experienced unsusceptible of being referred to them. The frequent recurrence of the poetical power, it is obvious to suppose, may produce in the mind a habit of order and harmony correlative with its own nature and with its effects upon other minds. But in the intervals of inspiration, and they may be frequent without being durable, a poet becomes a man, and is abandoned to the sudden reflux of the influences under which others habitually live. But as he is more delicately organized than other men, and sensible to pain and pleasure, both his own and that of others, in a degree unknown to them, he will avoid the one and pursue the other with an ardor proportioned to this difference. And he renders himself obnoxious to calumny, when he neglects to observe the circumstances under which these objects of universal pursuit and flight have disguised themselves in one another’s garments.

But there is nothing necessarily evil in this error, and thus cruelty, envy, revenge, avarice, and the passions purely evil have never formed any portion of the popular imputations on the lives of poets.

I have thought it most favorable to the cause of truth to set down these remarks according to the order in which they were suggested to my mind, by a consideration of the subject itself, instead of observing the formality of a polemical reply; but if the view which they contain be just, they will be found to involve a refutation of the arguers against poetry, so far at least as regards the first division of the subject. I can readily conjecture what should have moved the gall of some learned and intelligent writers who quarrel with certain versifiers; I confess myself, like them, unwilling to be stunned by the Theseids of the hoarse Codri of the day. Bavius and Mævius undoubtedly are, as they ever were, insufferable persons. But it belongs to a philosophical critic to distinguish rather than confound.

The first part of these remarks has related to poetry in its elements and principles; and it has been shown, as well as the narrow limits assigned them would permit, that what is called poetry, in a restricted sense, has a common source with all other forms of order and of beauty, according to which the materials of human life are susceptible of being arranged, and which is poetry in an universal sense.

The second part will have for its object an application of these principles to the present state of the cultivation of poetry, and a defence of the attempt to idealize the modern forms of manners and opinions, and compel them into a subordination to the imaginative and creative faculty. For the literature of England, an energetic development of which has ever preceded or accompanied a great and free development of the national will, has arisen as it were from a new birth. In spite of the low-thoughted envy which would undervalue contemporary merit, our own will be a memorable age in intellectual achievements, and we live among such philosophers and poets as surpass beyond comparison any who have appeared since the last national struggle for civil and religious liberty. The most unfailing herald, companion, and follower of the awakening of a great people to work a beneficial change in opinion or institution, is poetry. At such periods there is an accumulation of the power of communicating and receiving intense and impassioned conceptions respecting man and nature. The person in whom this power resides, may often, as far as regards many portions of their nature, have little apparent correspondence with that spirit of good of which they are the ministers. But even whilst they deny and abjure, they are yet compelled to serve, that power which is seated on the throne of their own soul. It is impossible to read the compositions of the most celebrated writers of the present day without being startled with the electric life which burns within their words. They measure the circumference and sound the depths of human nature with a comprehensive and all-penetrating spirit, and they are themselves perhaps the most sincerely astonished at its manifestations; for it is less their spirit than the spirit of the age. Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

The life and works of Percy Bysshe Shelley exemplify English Romanticism in both its extremes of joyous ecstasy and brooding despair. Romanticism’s major themes—restlessness and brooding, rebellion against authority, interchange with nature, the power of the visionary imagination and of poetry, the pursuit of ideal love, and the untamed spirit ever in search of freedom—all of these Shelley exemplified...

• Key Differences

Know the Differences & Comparisons

Difference Between Prose and Poetry

The basic difference between prose and poetry is that we have sentences and paragraphs, whereas lines and stanzas can be found in a poetry. Further, there is regular writing in prose, but there is a unique style of writing a poetry.

We can find prose in newspaper articles, blogs, short stories, etc., however, poetry is used to share something special, aesthetically. To know more on this topic, you can read the other differences below:

Content: Prose Vs Poetry

Comparison chart, how to remember the difference.

Definition of Prose

The prose is an ordinary writing style in literature, which encompasses characters, plot, mood, theme, the point of view, setting, etc. making it a distinctive form of language. It is written using grammatical sentences, which forms a paragraph. It may also include dialogues, and is sometimes, supported by images but does not have a metrical structure.

Prose can be fictional or non-fictional, heroic, alliterative, village, polyphonic, prose poetry etc.

Biography, autobiography, memoir, essay, short stories, fairy tales, article, novel, blog and so forth use prose for creative writing.

Definition of Poetry

Poetry is something that arouses a complete imaginative feeling, by choosing appropriate language and selective words and arranging them in a manner that creates a proper pattern, rhyme (two or more words having identical ending sounds) and rhythm (cadence of the poem).

Poetry uses an artistic way to communicate something special, i.e. a musical intonation of stressed (long sounding) and unstressed (short sounding) syllables to express or describe emotions, moments, ideas, experiences, feelings and thoughts of the poet to the audience. The structural components of poetry include lines, couplet, strophe, stanza, etc.

It is in the form of verses, which constitutes stanzas, that follows a meter. The number of verses in a stanza depends upon the type of the poem.

Key Differences Between Prose and Poetry

The difference between prose and poetry can be drawn clearly on the following grounds:

• Prose refers to a form of literature, having ordinary language and sentence structure. Poetry is that form of literature, which is aesthetic by nature, i.e. it has a sound, cadence, rhyme, metre, etc., that adds to its meaning.
• The language of prose is quite direct or straightforward. On the other hand, in poetry, we use an expressive or creative language, which includes comparisons, rhyme and rhythm that give it a unique cadence and feel.
• While the prose is pragmatic, i.e. realistic, poetry is figurative.
• Prose contains paragraphs, which includes a number of sentences, that has an implied message or idea. As against, poetry is written in verses, which are covered in stanzas. These verses leave a lot of unsaid things, and its interpretation depends upon the imagination of the reader.
• The prose is utilitarian, which conveys a hidden moral, lesson or idea. Conversely, poetry aims to delight or amuse the reader.
• The most important thing in prose is the message or information. In contrast, the poet shares his/her experience or feelings with the reader, which plays a crucial role in poetry.
• In prose, there are no line breaks, whereas when it comes to poetry, there are a number of line breaks, which is just to follow the beat or to stress on an idea.
• When it comes to paraphrasing or summarizing, both prose and poetry can be paraphrased, but the paraphrase of the poem is not the poem, because the essence of the poem lies in the style of writing, i.e. the way in which the poet has expressed his/her experience in verses and stanzas. So, this writing pattern and cadence is the beauty of poetry, which cannot be summarized.

The best trick to remember the difference between these two is to understand their writing style, i.e. while prose is written ordinarily, poetry has aesthetic features, and so it has a distinctive writing pattern.

Further, the prose is that form of language which expansively conveys a message or meaning by way of a narrative structure. On the contrary, poetry is such a form of literature, with a unique writing format, i.e. it has a pattern, rhyme and rhythm.

In addition to this, prose appears like big blocks of words, whereas the size of poetry may vary as per the line length and the poet’s intention.

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Microsoft 365 Life Hacks > Writing > Prose vs. poetry: what’s the difference?

Prose vs. poetry: what’s the difference?

Both prose and poetry are forms of writing; however, many people don’t fully understand the differences between the two. Learn the difference between prose versus poetry to expand your knowledge of common writing styles.

Have you ever read a beautifully written, heartfelt passage, but weren’t sure if it was considered a poem or prose? People often use the terms ‘prose’ and ‘poetry’ interchangeably, even though they’re two different forms of writing.

What is prose?

Prose is writing that doesn’t follow any meters or rhyming schemes. In fact, everyday writing is considered prose! Books, short stories, essays, and any sort of writing that doesn’t follow a specific structure is considered prose.

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Types of prose

There are a few different types of prose: Fictional prose, nonfictional prose, heroic prose, and prose poetry.

Fictional prose

Prose fiction is when an author tells a story that isn’t based on true events. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a great example of fictional prose.

Nonfictional prose

Non-fictional prose is when an author writes about real events. For example, newspapers or memoirs are examples of non-fiction prose. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi is a memoir that is considered non-fiction prose.

Heroic prose

Heroic prose is a story that is passed down orally, but it can also be written down. This form of prose isn’t as common as fictional prose, nonfictional prose, or prose poetry. Heroic prose includes parables, myths, and fables. The Odyssey by Homer is an example of heroic prose.

Prose poetry

Prose poetry is a form of writing that uses literary devices such as imagery, symbols, or alliteration. Prose poetry can be both fiction and non-fiction, and it is characterized by its poetic qualities expressed in prose form, but not necessarily by the absence of line breaks or rhyming scheme .

Here’s a sample of prose poetry from Amy Lowell’s Bath:

“The day is fresh-washed and fair, and there is a smell of tulips and narcissus in the air. The sunshine pours in at the bath-room window and bores through the water in the bath-tub in lathes and planes of greenish-white. It cleaves the water into flaws like a jewel, and cracks it to bright light.” You may have notice that Lowell does incorporate a rhyme in her poem—both white and light rhyme—but the poem itself doesn’t follow a specific rhyming scheme.

What is poetry?

There are many different forms of poetry out there, but in general, poetry focuses on rhythm. Poems also incorporate structure, patterns, and rhyming schemes. Some popular forms of poetry include:

• Lyric poetry

Here is an example from a famous poem titled I’m nobody! Who are you? by Emily Dickinson:

“How dreary to be somebody! How public like a frog To tell one’s name the livelong day To an admiring bog!”

The fundamental differences between poetry and prose

Prose is a straightforward form of writing that follows natural flow of language and doesn’t use line breaks. Poetry, on the other hand, often uses structure such as rhyme, rhythm, and intentional line breaks. While not all poems have to rhyme , it’s a signature of the form and many do.

If you’re interested in learning more about poetry, see how you can write a narrative poem or use punctuation in poetry .

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What’s the Difference Between Prose and Poetry?

When you pick up a book or read a piece of writing, you’re likely to encounter one of two art forms: prose or poetry.

Prose is your everyday kind of writing—the sentences and paragraphs that tell a story or explain something clear and straight. Poetry , though, is the special stuff where the words may not always rhyme, but they always touch your heart or make you think.

Each form has its charm. Keep reading as we simplify and break down the unique qualities of these two literary forms.

Table of Contents

What Is Prose?

Prose is the style of writing that most people use every day. It’s the language of blog posts, textbooks, emails, and letters. A prose is straightforward, written in sentences that combine to form paragraphs, and it communicates ideas in a clear and conventional way.

Historically, prose was anything that wasn’t poetry or verse. The term originated from the Latin “prosa,” which means “straightforward.” This history is important because it sets the stage for how writing developed and diversified.

Characteristics of Prose:

• Sentence Fluency: Prose has a natural flow of speech with grammatical structure, typically following standard punctuation and paragraph rules.
• Ordinary Language: The language used in prose tends to be straightforward, aiming for clarity and direct meaning.
• Narrative Form: Prose often tells a story or describes events, ideas, or concepts in a direct manner.

Types of Prose

Prose encompasses a broad spectrum of writing, ranging from creative storytelling to fact-based reporting. Each type serves different purposes and follows distinct conventions. Here, we’ll go over the main categories of prose by providing a more detailed explanation and examples for each type.

Fictional Prose:

• Novels :  These are lengthy fictional writings that explore complex characters, plots, and themes. For example, “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee is a novel that delves into serious themes like racism and injustice through a gripping narrative.
• Short Stories :  Short stories are much shorter in length. They often focus on a single incident or theme and aim to evoke a strong emotional response or a moment of realization. “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson is a classic example, known for its surprising ending and social commentary.
• Novellas:  Bridging the gap between a novel and a short story, novellas are concise and usually focus on a single conflict or theme. “The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka is a famous novella that tells the bizarre and thought-provoking story of a man transformed into a giant bug.

Non-Fictional Prose:

• Biographies :  These are detailed descriptions of a person’s life and are typically written in the third person. “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank, although a diary, is often read similarly to a biography, as it offers deep insights into the life of its author.
• Essays:  Essays are short to medium-length pieces that express the writer’s argument or point of view on a subject. “A Room of One’s Own” by Virginia Woolf is an essay that examines the role of women in literature and calls for both literal and figurative space for women writers.
• Journalistic Articles:  These prose works report news and provide information or analyses about current events. An example could include investigative articles one might read in The New York Times or The Guardian.

What is Poetry?

Poetry , often seen as the artful sister of prose, is a literary form that expresses ideas and emotions with an intensity and style not commonly found in everyday language. Poets use rhythm, rhyme, and a particular structure to craft pieces that not only carry deep meaning but also evoke an array of sensory experiences for the reader.

The term “poetry” originates from the Greek word “poiesis,” meaning “to make” or “to create.” It aptly captures the essence of poetry as a creative endeavor beyond mere writing.

Characteristics of Poetry:

• Economy of Language: Poets choose words carefully for impact, often using symbolism and metaphor to express deeper meanings.
• Unique Structure: Poems are written in lines, which may be grouped into stanzas or couplets, varying in length and form.
• Musical Quality: Whether it’s an overt rhyme scheme or the subtle cadence of free verse, poetry has an inherent musicality in its sound and rhythm.

Types of Poetry

• Narrative Poetry : It often includes a protagonist, a setting, and a plot, unfolding much like a short story but told in verse. Narratives can be long or short, serious or humorous. “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe captures the descent into madness of a grieving lover visited by a mysterious raven.
• Lyric Poetry : Emotionally driven, this type of poetry expresses personal feelings, thoughts, and observations and is typically written in the first person. The language is often musical, and the poems are usually short and intense. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot explores the inner psyche of its speaker with a profound emotional resonance.
• Dramatic Poetry : Verse written to be spoken, dramatic poetry presents the thoughts and discourse of characters in a dramatic situation. “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning presents a narrative within a dramatic monologue, revealing the speaker’s temperament as he describes a portrait of his late wife.
• Epic Poetry : A lengthy narrative form, epic poems recount the significant and heroic achievements of characters who embody the values of their civilization. “Paradise Lost” by John Milton is an epic poem that retells the biblical story of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden.
• Satirical Poetry : This type of poetry uses humor, irony, wit, and sometimes sarcasm to expose and criticize follies or evils in society, often with the intent of shaming individuals or groups into improvement. “The Canterbury Tales” by Geoffrey Chaucer includes tales that satirically portray different characters and social classes of the age.
• Haiku : Originating in Japan, the haiku emphasizes simplicity and intensity with its three-line structure limited to a 5-7-5 syllabic pattern.
• Free Verse : Defying conventional verse forms, free verse poems do not adhere to patterns of rhyme or rhythm. Poets use this freedom to create works that capture the nuances of speech or the unpredictability of thought.
• Sonnet : A highly structured form, traditionally, the sonnet consists of 14 lines and varies in rhyme schemes but is often used to explore themes of love, mortality, and nature.
• Villanelle : Composed of nineteen lines divided into five tercets followed by a quatrain, with the first and third lines of the first tercet repeated alternately. 
• Acrostic : Each line in an acrostic poem spells out a word or message when the first letter of each line is read vertically, adding a layer of meaning to the poem.
• Elegy : A reflective poem that often laments the death of an individual or a loss, elegies express sorrow and contemplation in a dignified and solemn tone.

Prose vs. Poetry: What Are the Differences?

Structural Layout and Form

• Prose:  Paragraphs form the basic structure, with sentences that build on each other in a logical sequence, each contributing to the narrative or argument.
• Poetry:  Lines and stanzas are fundamental, with the poem’s form adding to its meaning – whether it’s a sonnet, haiku, or free verse, the structure of a poem is more than just a vehicle for words; it’s part of the poem’s essence.

Rhythm and Rhyme

• Prose:  Typically has no systematic rhythm or rhyme, mimicking the cadence of natural speech.
• Poetry:  Often characterized by a patterned rhythm or meter, rhyme schemes may be used to create musicality and memorability, although this is not a necessity as seen in free verse.

Language and Imagery

• Prose:  Uses language that is direct and clear, painting pictures through narrative and description.
• Poetry:  Language is rich with imagery and figurative language, often creating vivid pictures and resonating on an emotional level through metaphor, simile, and other poetic devices.

Economy of Language

• Prose: Tends to be more expansive, providing detailed explanations and descriptions, using as many words as necessary to clarify and inform.
• Poetry: Values conciseness, using as few words as possible to create a powerful impact or to suggest a more profound meaning.

Use of Literary Devices

• Prose:  Employs literary devices such as analogies, metaphors, and foreshadowing to enhance the story, but generally less intensely focused than in poetry.
• Poetry:  Often layers multiple literary devices, such as alliteration, onomatopoeia, and assonance, to create texture and depth.

Subjectivity vs. Objectivity

• Prose: Sometimes aims for an objective tone, particularly in informative or journalistic writing, conveying facts and information.
• Poetry: Primarily subjective, expressing personal emotions, thoughts, or perspectives through nuanced use of language.

Creative Use of Space and Punctuation

• Prose:  Follows conventional grammar and punctuation rules to ensure clear communication of ideas.
• Poetry:  Poets may employ unconventional spacing, line breaks, and punctuation, or lack thereof, using these elements creatively to enhance the reading experience.

Purpose and Function

• Prose:  Communicates ideas, tells stories, or describes situations in a clear, structured way to inform, persuade, entertain, or explain.
• Poetry:  Aims to evoke emotions, provoke thought, and often leave interpretation open to the reader, providing a sensory and emotive response to the subject matter.

Line Breaks and Visual Presentation

• Prose:  Has consistent line breaks determined by the margin and are largely invisible to the reader, allowing the content to flow without interruption.
• Poetry:  Line breaks are deliberate and a fundamental poetic element, often used to create tension, pause, and emphasis; the visual arrangement becomes part of the poem’s meaning and impact.

The Purpose Behind the Writing

In literature, every piece has a purpose, whether it aims to entertain, inform, narrate, or inspire. The intent behind prose and poetry dramatically influences how they are written, read, and perceived.

Prose is often the go-to format for storytelling and sharing information owing to its clear and structured nature. Here’s how it serves its purpose:

• Narrative:  Novels and short stories engage readers with characters and plots, allowing for deep emotional connections and escapism.
• Informational:  Non-fiction prose, such as articles and essays, educates and informs by presenting facts and arguments logically and coherently.
• Practicality:  Instructional guides and manuals use prose to instruct and guide action through clear language and step-by-step descriptions.

Poetry speaks to the heart and the imagination. It has the unique ability to capture and convey the nuances of human emotion and experience through concentrated language.

• Expression:  Poets use their craft to explore themes of love, sorrow, joy, and the human condition—often leaving much unsaid but deeply felt.
• Imagery and Experience:  Through powerful imagery and a deliberate play on words, poetry creates an immersive experience for the reader.
• Cultural and Personal Identity:  Poetry often reflects cultural heritage and personal identity, bringing a voice to diverse perspectives and stories.

Blurring the Lines:

While we’ve outlined clear distinctions in purpose, it’s important to recognize that prose and poetry can sometimes overlap in their goals:

• Creative Non-Fiction:  This genre of prose can weave facts with literary style, providing informative content with the beauty of poetic language.
• Prose Poetry:  This hybrid form employs the approaches of poetry to create prose that reads with the music of poetry while telling a story or presenting an idea.

Debunking Common Misconceptions

Myth 1: all poetry must rhyme.

• Truth : While many traditional poems include rhyming words, this is not a requirement for poetry. There’s a rich tradition of non-rhyming poetry, known as free verse, where the focus is placed on other elements such as imagery, word choice, and metaphor.

Myth 2: Prose Isn’t Artistic or Creative

• Truth : Prose writing can be highly artistic and is a medium for writers to express creativity with imaginative narratives, sophisticated characters, and elegant language. The artistry in prose is often found in the way stories are told and how language is used rather than any adherence to structured patterns.

Myth 3: Poetry is Always Difficult to Understand

• Truth : While poetry can be dense and layered with meaning, not all poetry is intentionally obscure. Many poems are accessible and straightforward, inviting readers to engage with clear language and relatable themes.

Myth 4: Prose is Only for Storytelling

• Truth : Beyond fiction and storytelling, prose encompasses a wide range of writing that includes essays, journals, and non-fiction works. Prose can be used to inform, persuade, document, or explore subjects without narrative structure.

Myth 5: Poetry Has to Follow Specific Rules

• Truth : While traditional poetic forms such as sonnets and villanelles have specific rules, many modern poets write in free verse, which allows them to break away from strict structures to create a more spontaneous and personal piece of work.

Myth 5: Prose Is Always Long, and Poetry Is Always Short

• Truth : Length isn’t a defining factor for prose or poetry. While prose works can indeed be lengthy, as in novels, prose can also be concise, as seen in short stories. Poetry, on the other hand, while often brief, can span hundreds of lines in the form of epics.

Frequently Asked Questions 

Can prose contain poetic elements.

Yes, prose can contain poetic elements such as vivid imagery, figurative language, and even rhythm. This is often seen in literary fiction and creative non-fiction.

Is poetry always shorter than prose?

Not necessarily. While poetry is often concise and economizes language, some poetic forms, like epics, can be quite lengthy.

Do people prefer prose to poetry or vice versa?

Preference for prose or poetry is subjective and varies from person to person. Some enjoy the straightforwardness of prose, while others appreciate the lyrical and emotional depth of poetry.

How does one choose whether to write in prose or poetry?

The choice between writing in prose or poetry depends on the writer’s intention, message, and style, as well as the desired impact on the reader.

To sum it all up, prose is our everyday writing style—clear and straight to the point. It helps us share stories and information in a way that’s easy to understand. Poetry , on the other hand, is more about playing with words like a puzzle, creating feelings and images that stay with you, often in just a small number of lines.

Both prose and poetry help us share and enjoy all kinds of stories—they’re both just different flavors of storytelling. So next time you’re reading, just let the words do their thing and enjoy the ride. Happy reading!

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Poetry Explained

10 Important Elements of Poetry

Poetry, as a distinct and interesting art form, comprises a number of elements that are worth considering while analyzing and understanding a poetic text.

Poetry is an intricate literary form that incorporates rhyme , figurative language , sound devices , and meter in order to evoke a wide array of meanings. The language of poetry is not always straightforward. It guides readers to reach a conclusion but never gives out any details explicitly. Such is the beauty of a poetry text that demands readers’ attentive and creative participation. With the knowledge of the important poetry elements, we can understand a poem’s message and appreciate the text more effectively.

The Elements of Poetry

• 1 Structure and Form
• 3 Rhyme and Rhyme Scheme
• 4 Sound and Rhythm
• 7 Figurative Language and Poetic Devices
• 9 Tone and Mood
• 12 Other Resources

Structure and Form

Poetry comes in a variety of forms and in each form follows a specific structure. For example, the sonnet form containing a set structure is different from odes . A free verse poem does not have the metrical regularity, which can be found in a blank verse poem.

The structural elements found in poetry are:

• Stanza : is a group of lines set off from others by a blank line or indentation.
• Verse : are stanzas with no set number of lines that make up units based on sense.
• Canto : is a stanza pattern found in medieval and modern long poetry.

Some of the important poetry forms include:

• Sonnet : is a fourteen-line poem with a set rhyme scheme , often divided into quatrains , octaves , and sestets .
• Ode : is a formal lyric poem written in celebration or dedication of something with specific intent.
• Lyric : is a personal piece of poetry that tends to be shorter, melodic, and contemplative.
• Elegy : is a mournful poem, especially a lament for the dead.
• Villanelle : is a nineteen-line poem comprising five triplets with a closing quatrain .
• Limerick : is a humorous piece of poetry that consists of five lines with the same rhythm .
• Haiku : is a form of unrhymed Japanese poetry containing three sections with 17 syllables arranged in a 5-7-5 pattern.

Meter is the definitive pattern found in verse . Some of the important metrical feet in English poetry include:

• Iamb : consists of one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, as in des- pair , ex- clude , re- peat , etc.
• Trochee : is a metrical foot containing one stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable, as in sis -ter, flow -er, splin -ter, etc.
• Dactyl : comprised one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables, as in si -mi-lar.
• Anapest : consists of three syllables, where the first two are unstressed and the last one is stressed, as in com-pre- hend .
• Spondee : contains two stressed syllables, like “ drum beat ”.
• Pyrrhic : is the opposite of spondee and contains two unstressed syllables.

Poets utilize these metrical feet to create a pattern, which is called a metrical pattern or metrical scheme. Some of the important metrical patterns include:

• Iambic pentameter : occurs when the lines of a poem contain five iambs each. Shakespeare’s sonnets are written in this meter.
• Iambic tetrameter : is another important metrical pattern. It occurs when the lines have four iambs each, as in Robert Frost ‘s poem ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ .
• Trochaic tetrameter : is the recurring pattern of four trochees per line. In ‘The Song of Hiawatha,’ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow uses this meter.
• Trochaic octameter : occurs when verse lines contain eight trochees each. Edgar Allan Poe ’s best-known poem ‘The Raven’ is written in this meter.

Rhyme and Rhyme Scheme

Rhyme is the repetitive pattern of sounds found in poetry. They are used to reinforce a pattern or rhyme scheme. In specific poetry forms such as ballads , sonnets , and couplets , the rhyme scheme is an important element. The common types of rhymes used in poetry are:

• End Rhyme : is a common type of rhyme in poetry that occurs when the last word of two or more lines rhyme.
• Imperfect Rhyme : is a type of rhyme that occurs in words that do not have an identical sound.
• Internal Rhyme : occurs in the middle of lines in poetry.
• Masculine Rhyme : is the rhyming between stressed syllables at the end of verse lines.
• Feminine Rhyme : is the rhyming between unstressed syllables at the end of verse lines.

Sound and Rhythm

Sound and rhythm are other important elements of poetry. The sound of a poetic text means how a line or what sounds some specific words evoke in readers’ minds. Rhythm is a set pattern that is formed by these sounds. In poetry, rhythm refers to the metrical rhythm that involves the arrangement of syllables into repeating patterns called feet. For example, the following lines from William Shakespeare’s ‘ Sonnet 116 ’ contain an iambic rhythm with a few variations:

Let me/ not to/ the mar /-riage of/ true minds Ad- mit / im- pe /-di- ments ./ Love is/ not love Which al /-ters when / it al /-te- ra /-tion finds , Or bends / with the / re- mo /-ver to / re- move :

To help with unstanding the rhythm and meter of poetry, we have a Meter Syllables toggle on poetry, highlighting the stressed syllables of thousands of poems. You can get access through joining Poetry + .

The subject or content of poetry differs across a variety of forms. A subject is what the poem is about. For instance, the subjects of sonnets include love and admiration for one’s beloved, heartache and separation. Whereas divine sonnets include the subjects of devotions to God, enlightenment , and salvation. Elegies are written in memory of someone who is no more. Therefore, the subject of these poems is a dead person.

Speaker is one who narrates the poem. In poetry, we tend to think that the poet is the speaker himself. However, it is not always the case. Sometimes, poets assume an imaginative character and write the poem from their perspective . Generally, the poem is told from the perspective of a first-person speaker or a third-person speaker. Poets also use the second-person point of view in order to communicate directly with readers. Understanding the speaker helps us to know the poem’s tone and mood .

Figurative Language and Poetic Devices

Poetry uses figurative language and different poetic devices to suggest different interpretations of words or to evoke other ideas that are not literally connected with the words. The sound devices such as alliteration , assonance , consonance , and onomatopoeia are used to create musical effects. Elements of poetic diction such as irony , symbolism , and juxtaposition leave a poem open to several interpretations. In the same way, poetic devices such as metaphor and simile are used to build a relationship between different images previously not perceived.

Some important poetic devices in poetry include:

• Simile : is a comparison between two unlike things using the words “like” or “as”.
• Metaphor : is an implicit comparison between different images or ideas without the use of “like” or “as”.
• Repetition : is a poetic technique that refers to the reuse of words, phrases, and images several times in a poem.
• Enjambment : occurs when a line is cut off before its natural point.
• Irony : occurs when an outcome is different than what is expected.
• Personification : is a poetic device that refers to the projection of human characteristics into inanimate objects.
• Onomatopoeia : occurs when a word imitates a natural sound.
• Hyperbole : occurs when one statement is elevated for a certain poetic effect.

The theme is a recurring idea or a pervading thought in a work of literature. Poetry themes include some common ideas such as love, nature, beauty, and as complex as death, spirituality, and immortality. An understanding of the theme helps readers to identify the core message of the poem or the poet’s purpose for writing the poem. For example, the following lines of Robert Burns’ ‘A Red, Red Rose’ exemplify the theme as well as the underlying message of the entire poem:

O my Luve is like a red, red rose That’s newly sprung in June; O my Luve is like the melody That’s sweetly played in tune.

This piece is written in admiration of the speaker’s beloved. Therefore, the main themes of the poem are beauty, love, and admiration.

Explore some of the important themes in poetry .

Tone and Mood

Diction is another significant aspect of poetry. It refers to the language, sound, and form used in a particular piece of poetry. The tone or attitude of a poem’s speaker and the mood of the entire text is part of poetic diction. To understand the speaker’s attitude or tone to the subject, readers have to look for the poet’s choice of words, figurative language, and sound devices. The mood is related to the impression of the text upon readers. Explore these lines from Keats’ ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ :

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: ‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thine happiness, That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated case.

In these lines, the speaker describes the nightingale’s song in an elevated language. He is awe-struck after listening to its intoxicating song. Thus, the tone is emotive, pleasant, and elated. The mood of the poem is happy and positive.

The syntax is the ordering of words into meaningful patterns. Poetry has a distinct syntax compared to prose , fiction, and other forms of literature. Poets manipulate the conventional syntax to emphasize specific words. The purpose of adopting a specific syntax and diction is to achieve certain artistic effects such as tone, mood, etc. For instance, in Dickinson’s ‘ A Narrow Fellow in the Grass ,’ the speaker describes her surprise and amusement upon the discovery of a snake. To convey her feelings, Dickinson uses a specific syntax:

A narrow fellow in the grass Occasionally rides; You may have met him-did you not His notice sudden is,

The most important elements of poetry are structure, form, syntax , figurative language , rhyme , meter , theme, diction, etc.

The 12 elements of poetry include structure, form, speaker , sound devices , figurative language , rhyme , meter , theme, tone , mood , syntax , and diction.

Diction is the poet’s use of language, word choice, and syntax . The poetic diction is a significant poetry element as it sets a poetry text apart from other forms of literary writing.

In poetry analysis, one has to study the poem’s structure, form, rhythm , rhyme scheme , meter , themes, diction, and syntax .

Other Resources

• Watch: Elements of Poetry for Beginners
• Learn: About the Rhyme Schemes in Poetry
• Explore: a list of the greatest poetry

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Gupta, SudipDas. "10 Important Elements of Poetry". Poem Analysis , https://poemanalysis.com/poetry-explained/elements-of-poetry/ . Accessed 23 August 2024.

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How to Write an Essay Comparing Poems

This is Revision World’s guide on how to write an essay or answer an exam question that asks you to compare poems within the poetry anthology you are studying.

Understanding the Task:

Identify the Key Components: Ensure you understand the task requirements, including the poems you're comparing, the themes, and the aspects you need to analyse (e.g., structure, language, tone).

Pre-Writing Stage:

Read and Annotate: Read the poems multiple times, annotating key themes, literary devices, and interesting observations.

Identify Similarities and Differences: Note down similarities and differences in themes, imagery, language, structure, and tone between the two poems.

Structuring Your Essay:

 Introduction:

Introduce the poems and poets, providing context if necessary.

Present your thesis statement, outlining the main points of comparison.

Body Paragraphs:

Topic Sentences: Start each paragraph with a clear topic sentence that states the aspect of comparison.

Comparison: Analyse each poem separately, focusing on the chosen aspect (e.g., theme, structure). Then, compare and contrast the same aspect in both poems.

Use of Evidence: Provide evidence from the poems to support your analysis (quotations).

Analysis: Interpret the significance of the similarities and differences, considering their effects on the reader and the overall meaning of the poems.

Conclusion:

Summarise your main points of comparison.

Reflect on the significance of the comparisons and their implications for the reader.

Offer insights into the broader themes or messages conveyed by the poems.

Writing Tips:

Be Specific: Avoid vague statements and ensure your comparisons are specific and well-supported by evidence.

Consider Poetic Devices: Analyse the poets' use of poetic devices (e.g., imagery, symbolism, metaphor) and how they contribute to the overall effect of the poems.

Focus on Key Themes: Choose a few key themes or aspects to compare rather than attempting to cover everything in the poems.

Maintain Coherence: Ensure your essay flows logically, with clear transitions between paragraphs and ideas.

Proofread: Carefully proofread your essay for grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors.

Example Statement:

"In 'Poem A' and 'Poem B,' both poets utilise imagery and symbolism to explore the theme of loss, but while 'Poem A' uses natural imagery to convey a sense of grief and acceptance, 'Poem B' employs religious symbolism to depict a more existential struggle with loss and faith."

Example Topic Sentences:

"In 'Poem A,' the poet employs vivid natural imagery to convey the speaker's emotional response to loss."

"Conversely, 'Poem B' utilises religious symbolism to explore the theme of loss in a more abstract and existential manner."

By following these steps and incorporating these tips, you can effectively write a well-structured and insightful essay comparing two poems in your GCSE English Literature exam.

Poetry & Poets

Explore the beauty of poetry – discover the poet within

How To Write A Poetry Comparison Essay

An essay comparing two poems needs to be written with an understanding of how themes, structure, forms, language, and style distinguish the two poems. It is also important to consider how the themes, structure, forms, language, and style interact with each other to create meaning and richness. Even if the poems are similar in some ways, the differences must be discussed to identify the unique qualities of the individual poems. This essay will examine the similarities and differences between two poems, “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost.

The two poems are similar in theme in that they both explore the concept of making decisions and taking different paths or routes. The speaker of both poems is at a crossroads in life and has to make a decision which will form his personal history and future. In “The Road Not Taken”, the speaker is presented with two roads and he is uncertain which one to take. In “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, the speaker is presented with the same dilemma, but instead of a physical road, he is face with an opportunity to stay and enjoy the beauty of nature versus leaving and returning to reality. Both speakers make a conscious effort to make a personal decision and break free from indecision.

When discussing the structure and form of the poems, it must be noted that both poems have a simple, regular meter. The meter of “The Road Not Taken” is iambic tetrameter and the meter of “Stopping by Woods” is iambic trimeter. The rhyme scheme of both poems is also similar and is made up of couplets. Both poems also use enjambment throughout, which creates a sense of incompleteness and gives the poems an unfinished feel. This technique is used to signify the struggle of the speaker with making decisions and his anguish in not knowing what to choose.

The language used in both poems is also similar in that both authors use words of caution and alertness to emphasize the importance of making the right decision. In “The Road Not Taken”, the word “doubt” is used to highlight the consequence of indecision and in “Stopping by Woods”, words such as “promise” and “duty” are used to emphasize the difficulty of the decision-making process. Both poems also contain extended metaphors to illustrate the concept of making a choice. In “The Road Not Taken”, the road is a metaphor for life’s journey and the journey of the individual, whereas in “Stopping by Woods”, the woods represent a momentary escape from reality.

Style of the Poems

The style of both poems differs significantly. “The Road Not Taken” is written in the traditional and formal style of a typical Romantic poem. It uses many of the conventions of the Romantic period, such as references to nature, melancholy, and the use of sonnets and iambic pentameter. On the other hand, “Stopping by Woods” is written in a more modern and conversational style. It is less complex than other Romantic works and its language is very direct and simple. The lack of complexity in the poem, as well as the combination of simple language and the casual tone of voice, create a relaxed, open atmosphere. This is in stark contrast to the complexity and formality of “The Road Not Taken”.

Analysis of the Poems

The main theme of both poems is decision-making; however, each poem takes a slightly different approach to the subject matter. “The Road Not Taken” is more reflective and emphasizes the importance of making the “right” decision. The poem suggests that it is better to make the more difficult decision, rather than the simpler, easier choice. “Stopping by Woods” on the other hand, is more balanced and suggests that it is possible to find a balance between making the easier choice and taking the path less traveled. The poem suggests that it is possible to make an informed decision while still allowing oneself to be open to new experiences and opportunities.

Context of the Poems

The contexts in which both poems were written must also be taken into consideration. “The Road Not Taken” was written post-World War I, during a period of social change, transition, and uncertainty. The poem explores the idea of taking the path less traveled and suggests that being able to fully comprehend the consequences of one’s choices is impossible. “Stopping by Woods” was written during the Great Depression and its overarching theme is that of a sense of calm and peace in the midst of a chaotic world. The poem emphasizes that it is possible to accept the realities of life while realizing it is possible to find moments of respite and reprieve.

In conclusion, when comparing two poems it is important to take into account the similarities and differences in their themes, structure, forms, language, and style. Both “The Road Not Taken” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” explore the concept of making decisions and taking different paths or routes. However, each poem takes a slightly different approach to the subject. “The Road Not Taken” is more reflective and emphasizes the importance of making the “right” decision whereas “Stopping by Woods” is more balanced and suggests that it is possible to find a balance between making a simpler choice and taking the path less traveled. It is also important to consider the context in which each poem was written as this can give insights into the message the author was trying to convey.

Theme & Symbols

The poem’s theme and symbols are two areas of the poem that need to be analyzed. When it comes to “The Road Not Taken” the theme of choosing can be seen all throughout. The speaker is presented with two roads and he is pressured to make a decision that will affect his future. The poem also uses symbols such as the two roads and the two paths to represent the decisions that the speaker faces and the options that he can choose from. The two roads, can both represent the same decision, but could also represent the consequences of the choices he has made. The poem also uses imagery, such as the yellow woods, to give a vivid idea of the path that has been taken.

In “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, the theme explored is that of mortality and change. The speaker of the poem is searching for solace and peace, but also for something that can weather the storms of life. The symbols in the poem represent the transience of things in life, such as the snow and the frozen lake, which are both in a constant state of change. The poem also uses images such as the farmer’s house in the village, to represent hope and the promise of a better future, away from the secluded and still woods.

Examining the Messages

The messages in the two poems are closely related, but also have some differences. In “The Road Not Taken”, the message is that of taking responsibility for one’s choices and realizing that life is a series of decisions. The poem suggests that not taking a path and remaining in limbo, is not beneficial to the individual in the end. In “Stopping by Woods”, the message is that of taking a pause, or a momentary break, to appreciate and enjoy the wonders of nature. The poem suggests that it is indeed possible to find a balance between making choices, taking risks, and being open to new experiences.

Message of the Poems to the Reader

The message of both poems is one of self-reflection and the need to take responsibility for one’s own choices and actions. “The Road Not Taken” emphasizes the importance of taking difficult and challenging paths, rather than the easier choice. The poem also reinforces the idea that life is a series of choices, and that’s why it is necessary to have the courage to make a choice and own the consequences of one’s decision. On the other hand, “Stopping by Woods” is about seeking solace, and realizing that it is okay to take a break and to appreciate the beauty of nature and its solitude. The poem also suggests that it is possible to make an informed decision while still allowing one to be open to new experiences.

Writing a Poetry Comparison Essay

When writing a poetry comparison essay, it is important to consider the structure and form, language, and style of each poem. It is also essential to understand the context in which each poem was written and the messages being conveyed. Every poem has its own unique set of qualities, which needs to be discussed in order to create a thorough, meaningful analysis.

When writing a comparison essay, it is important to remember the key aspects that need to be discussed. The structure, form, and language of both poems must be examined and compared. Examining the themes, symbols, and messages of each poem is also essential. Finally, when comparing two poems, the context and style of each poem should also be taken into account.

Minnie Walters

Minnie Walters is a passionate writer and lover of poetry. She has a deep knowledge and appreciation for the work of famous poets such as William Wordsworth, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, and many more. She hopes you will also fall in love with poetry!

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As a verb poem, as a noun essay is, alternative forms, derived terms, related terms, external links.