Blank Verse Examples

Blank Verse

Blank Verse is unrhymed iambic pentameter. Iambic pentameter refers to the meter of a line of poetry. The line has 10 syllables, and the emphasis on the syllables alternates-every other syllable is stressed.

Examples of Blank Verse:

Sonnets are written in iambic pentameter, but sonnets have a specific rhyme scheme.

Blank verse is iambic pentameter that does not rhyme. Blank verse is often used in monologues in Shakespeare's plays, and is used in other poems.

Examples of Blank Verse from Literature

Robert Frost's "The Mending Wall"

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

William Cullen Bryant's "Thanatopsis"

To him who in the love of Nature holds

Communion with her visible forms, she speaks

A various language; for his gayer hours

She has a voice of gladness, and a smile

And eloquence of beauty, and she glides

Into his darker musings, with a mild

And healing sympathy, that steals away

Mercutio's Queen Mab Monologue in Romeo and Juliet

O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.

She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes

In shape no bigger than an agate-stone

On the fore-finger of an alderman,

Drawn with a team of little atomies

Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep;

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