 by John Dryden), but Germanic poetry employed the hemistich as a basic component of verse.In Old English and Old Norse poetry, each line of alliterative verse was divided into an "a-verse" and "b-verse" hemistich with a strong caesura between.In "Beowulf," there are only five basic types of hemistich, with some used only as initial hemistichs and some only as secondary hemistichs.