Poetry other variations of "shi" poetry, generally either a four line (quatrain, or "jueju") or else an eight line poem is normal; either way with the even numbered lines rhyming. The line length is scanned by according number of characters (according to the convention that one character equals one syllable), and are predominantly either five or seven characters long, with a caesura before the final three syllables. The lines are generally end-stopped, considered as a series of couplets, and exhibit verbal parallelism as a key poetic device. The "old style" verse ("gushi") is less formally strict than the "jintishi", or regulated
Portrait of a Lady (poem) Portrait of a Lady (poem) "Portrait of a Lady" is a poem by American-British poet T. S. Eliot (1888–1965), first published in September 1915 in ". " It was published again in March 1916 in "Others: An Anthology of the New Verse," in February 1917 (without the epigraph) in "The New Poetry: An Anthology," and finally in his 1917 collection of poems, "Prufrock and Other Observations." The poem's title is widely seen to be derived from the novel of the same name by Henry James. The poem's epigraph is a famous quotation from Christopher Marlowe's play "The Jew of Malta":