If a p. is defined as one or more sentences unified by a dominant mood or thought, then poetry, like prose, can be seen as moving forward in units which could be called ps. Many lyrics might be described as single v. ps., the sonnet as one or, if the volta (q. v.) be sufficiently marked, two. Further, because for centuries stanza was syntactically (as well as metrically) defined, the sense in elaborate stanzaic forms like the Spenserian and ottava rima (qq. v.) tends to assume p. form. However, most traditional stanzas are isometrical or isomorphic—i. e. identical in number of lines, meter, and rhyme scheme—and variety of effect is difficult to achieve in such poems. The result, esp. in long works by inferior poets, can be a numbing monotony of effect.
A distinctive characteristic of the p. in prose is of course that it does not have a settled length, that each individual p. may take the form most appropriate to the thought requiring expression. In poetry such freedom can best be achieved in narrative and descriptive poetry (qq. v.), where the ps. are often indicated by indentation of or spacing between lines. They are most prominent, however, in blank verse. (Rhymed v. ps. do occur—e. g. the irregular canzoni of Milton’s Lycidas or the indented sections of varying numbers of couplets within the subdivisions of Pope’s Essay on Man. )But it is in nondramatic blank verse that the v. p. as we customarily think of it reaches its fullest devel. Lacking the somewhat arbitrary organization provided by an established rhyme scheme, blank verse must provide units supporting the organization of idea such that the narration, description, or exposition unfolds in a series of stages felt as justly proportioned. In this sense the v. p. is a syntactic period, frequently a complex or periodic sentence, deployed in enjambed stichic verse so that the beginnings and ends of the syntactic frames conspicuously do not coincide with those of the metrical frames (the lines), with the result that meter and syntax are in counterpoint or tension.
The v. p. is a common feature of Old Germanic heroic poetry and is an important element in Eng. poetry as early as Beowulf , where sentences often begin at the caesura. But by general consent the greatest master of the v. p. is John Milton. Many of the most characteristic effects of Paradise Lost —its majesty, its epic sweep, its rich counterpoint of line and sentence rhythms—are produced or enhanced by Milton’s v. ps. To sustain his ps., Milton employed enjambment (q. v.), interruption, inversion, and suspension, the device of the periodic sentence whereby the completion of the thought is delayed until the end of the period. The average sentence in Milton covers 17 lines, but often may cover 25 to 30. So powerful was Milton’s influence on later poets that his voice, his distinctive rhythms, even his vocabulary and syntactic strategies can be recognized in much Eng. metrical verse of the 18th and 19th cs. (Havens). Whitman too, and the subsequent free verse (q. v.) for which he provided one model, makes much use of the v. p. (e. g. the first 22 lines of “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking”). Thus far, however, no one distinctive free-verse p. has been devised—since free verse lacks the background of the constant meter against which the v. p. can be perceived to play, it is doubtful one could be—and when the v. p. is spoken of, one is still likely to think automatically of Milton. —G. Hübner, Die stilistische Spannung in Milton’s P. L. (1913); R. D. Havens, The Influence of Milton on Eng. Poetry (1922); J. Whaler, Counterpoint and Symbol (1956); E. Weismiller, “Blank Verse,” A Milton Encyc , ed. W. B. Hunter, Jr., et al. (1978); W. H. Beale, “Rhet. in the OE V. P.,” NM 80 (1979); J. Hollander, “Sense Variously Drawn Out,’” in Hollander.
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