A short note on Free Verse
Verse Libre or Free Verse
We come across the idea of free verse in French. In France, it is called vers libre. This kind of verse is also called polyrhymic verse. However, such kind of verse has its lines composed without a regular metre and usually without rhyme. The great father or the great pioneer of the form was Walt Whitman. The modern poet's Leaves of Grass (1855) constituted a manifesto of free verse. The epigraph from Leaves of Grass is an excellent example of free verse:
"Come, said my soul,
Such verses for my Body let us write, (for we are one,)
That should I after return,
Or, long, long hence, in other spheres,
There to some group of mates the chants resuming,
(Tallying Earth's soil, trees, winds, tumultuous waves,)
Ever with pleas'd smile I may keep on,
Ever and ever yet the verses owning—as, first, I here and now
Signing for Soul and Body, set to them my name"
It is actually a term that describes many forms of irregular, syllabic or unrhymed verse. In such verses, the ordinary rules of prosody are not carried out. Walt Whitman, an American poet, pioneered the form of vers libre or free verse.
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