French alexandrine French alexandrine The French alexandrine () is a syllabic poetic meter of (nominally and typically) 12 syllables with a medial caesura dividing the line into two hemistichs (half-lines) of six syllables each. It was the dominant long line of French poetry from the 17th through the 19th century, and influenced many other European literatures which developed alexandrines of their own. According to verse historian Mikhail Gasparov, the French alexandrine developed from the Ambrosian octosyllable, by gradually losing the final two syllables, then doubling this line in a syllabic context with phrasal stress rather than length as a marker. The earliest
Line break (poetry) great deal of poetry where at least some of the lines are broken in the middles of words: this can be a device for achieving inventive rhyme schemes. In general, line breaks divide the poetry into smaller units called lines, (this is a modernisation of the term verse) which are often interpreted in terms of their self-contained meanings and aesthetic values: hence the term "good line". Line breaks, indentations, and the lengths of individual words determine the visual shape of the poetry on the page, which is a common aspect of poetry but never the sole purpose of a line