VERSE, a line of poetry, consisting of a certain number of metrical feet, disposed ac cording to the rules of the particular species of poetry which the author intends to compose. Also more commonly used as meaning a stanza, or combination of lines regularly recurring, whether like or unlike in measure. It may be either dactylic, iambic or trochaic, according to the foot that dominates. If the lines ex hibit two, three or more measures, it is styled dimetre, trimetre, etc. In the broader sense verse means poetry when expressed in measured cadence, either oral or written. The origin of verse is lost in antiquity. Its cultivation in dicates progress,from the savage state, and it was probably an evolution from unconsciously poetic utterances of man at the dawn of human intelligence. It is doubtful if the verses of Hebrew poetry were measured, or had more of the mechanical form of poetry than an irregu larly recurring cadence. The use of rhymed
cadences is comparatively modern. The.thulti plication of poetry and the growing fastidious ness of taste have constantly tended to increase the varieties of verse. Grammarians have elaborately classified these, and analytically dis tinguished the possible divisions of words into bars of accented and unaccented syllables. A mechanical adherence to a uniform measure is, however, irksome in poetry as well as in music ; and poets who are gifted with any command of language vary their verse as their feelings dic tate. These arbitrary changes it is impossible to classify. Modern French and Italian verse is almost always rhymed. In America, England and Germany there are the varieties of blank verse and rhyme. See METRE; POETRY ; RHYTHM.