Rhymes and Meters

This book has been compiled with one end in view: to arrange in a convenient and inexpensive form the fundamentals of verse

At the same time, even a poet must learn to handle his verse with some degree of skill or his work is apt to fall very flat, and the mere verse writer who cannot rhyme correctly and fit his lines together in meter had much better stick to prose.

The ability to write verse can be acquired; only a poet can write poetry.

Though most poetry is in verse form, most verse is not poetry.

Throughout the following pages “verse” stands for any kind of metrical composition as distinguished from prose. It is not used as a synonym for “poetry.”