Studies in English Language and Literature

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