Blank Verse

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Rebecca Clark

blank verse, unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter, as in these final lines of Tennyson's ‘Ulysses’ 1842): One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Blank verse is a very flexible English verse form which can attain rhetorical grandeur while echoing the natural rhythms of speech and allowing smooth enjambment. First used (c. 1540) by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, it soon became both the standard metre for dramatic poetry and a widely used form for narrative and meditative poems. Much of the finest verse in English—by Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Stevens— has been written in blank verse. In other languages, notably Italian (in hendecasyllables) and German, blank verse has been an important medium for poetic drama. Blank verse should not be confused with free verse, which has no regular metre.

Upon a Child That Died

Here she lies, a pretty bud, Lately made of flesh and blood, Who as soon fell fast asleep, As her little eyes did peep. Give her strewings, but not stir The earth that lightly covers her

Robert Herrick