VerseMost verse writing uses meter as its primary organizational mode, as opposed to prose, which uses grammatical and discoursal units like sentences and paragraphs. Verse may also use rhyme and other technical devices that are often associated with poetry.
Not all verse is poetry. Generally speaking, what separates the two is that in poetry language achieves the highest possible level of condensation.
In popular music a verse roughly corresponds with a poetic stanza. It is often sharply contrasted with the chorus or refrain melodically, rhythmically, and harmonically, and assumes a higher level of dynamics and activity, often with added instrumentation. See: strophic form, verse-chorus form and Thirty-two-bar form.
Holy books such as the Bible or Qur'an are divided into small verses.
Rhymed verse is the most commonly used form of verse and generally has a discernable meter and an end rhyme.
I felt a cleavage in my mind
As if my brain had split;
I tried to match it, seam by seam,
But could not make them fit.
The thought behind I strove to join
Unto the thought before,
But sequence ravelled out of reach
Like balls upon a floor.
-Emily Dickinson
Blank verse is generally identified by a regular meter, but no end rhyme.
In Mathematics, Woman leads the way:
The narrow-minded pedant still believes
That two and two make four! Why, we can prove,
We women-household drudges as we are-
That two and two make five-or three-or seven;
Or five-and-twenty, if the case demands!
-from Princess Ida
Free verse is usually defined as having no fixed meter and no end rhyme. Although free verse may include end rhyme, it commonly does not.
Whirl up, sea--
Whirl your pointed pines,
Splash your great pines
On our rocks,
Hurl your green over us,
Cover us with your pools of fir.
-H.D.
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