Hemistich
 | This article needs additional citations for verification. (November 2018) |
A hemistich ( to indicate great duress in his characters, where they were incapable of forming complete lines due to emotional or physical pain, but more likely he never finished the poem.
In
Pearl Poet and Layamon
using a regularized set of principles for which metrical (as well as alliterative) forms were allowed in which hemistich position.
In Arabic and Persian poetry, a line of verse almost invariably consists of two hemistichs of equal length, forming a couplet. In some kinds of Persian and Arabic poetry, known as mathnawi or masnavi, the two hemistichs of a line rhyme with the scheme aa, bb, cc, dd, etc. In other kinds, such as the ruba'i, qasida, or ghazal, the rhyme scheme is aa, ba, ca, da, and so on with the same rhyme used for the second hemistich of every couplet.
Notes
- ^ "hemistich". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
References
- Brogan, T. V. F., Roger A. Hornsby, and Thomas Cable. "Hemistich." In Alex Preminger and T.V.F. Brogan, eds. The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1993. 514.