25

CHAPTER IV
STANZA FORMS 31

CHAPTER V
SUBTLETIES OF VERSIFICATION 37

CHAPTER VI
THE QUATRAIN AND SONNET 45

CHAPTER VII
THE BALLADE AND OTHER FRENCH FORMS 53

CHAPTER VIII
THE SONG 67

CHAPTER IX
TYPES OF MODERN VERSE 75

CHAPTER X
VERSE TRANSLATION 85

CHAPTER XI
ABOUT READING 93

CHAPTER XII
HINTS FOR BEGINNERS 101

APPENDIX
(a) THE VERSE MARKET 111

(b) SUGGESTIONS FOR READING 114

I

VERSE MAKING IN GENERAL

CHAPTER I

VERSE MAKING IN GENERAL

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

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

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

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