Elements of poetry

A literary art form that incorporates rhythm and imagery, poetry is governed by specific rules and has taken a variety of forms over the centuries. As a result, it has a vocabulary all its own. Cast your mind back to those old English lit classes, and see what you can remember!

Think you’re a whiz in poetry?
Take this quiz, and we shall see!

1. Fourteen lines encompass me,
Four and four and three and three.
Milton turned me out with ease;
For Browning, I came from “the Portuguese.”
2. I can be a poem or song
Of praise to a god or hero strong,
Or show deep reverence or zeal
About a value or ideal.
3. I am, technically,
A metrical line in poetry,
Blank or free, short or long;
You also find me in a song.
Though I may or may not rhyme,
Sound and rhythm me define.
4. In a song, I am a verse;
In a poem, a group of lines,
Like a paragraph in prose,
With or without rhymes.
5. The French think I am fine; I’m loved by Beaudelaire.
Twelve syllables per line, in English I am rare.
6. Composed of three lines
And seventeen syllables,
From the East I come.
7. Poem in which the first
Or last letters in
Each line, when read vertically,
Make a message or word.