Written in unrhymed alliterative verse. Lines contain 4 stressed syllables, separated after the second by a caesura.

The lines end with a "bob and wheel": A short line (the "bob), followed by a trimeter quatrain (the "wheel"), with an ABABA rhyme scheme.

GATHER ye rosebuds while ye may, 
    Old time is still a-flying : 
And this same flower that smiles to-day 
    To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun, 
    The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run, 
    And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first, 
    When youth and blood are warmer ; 
But being spent, the worse, and worst 
    Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time, 
    And while ye may go marry : 
For having lost but once your prime 
    You may for ever tarry.

"The Passionate Shepherd to his Love"

Tamburlaine the Great

Hero & Leander

Doctor Faustus

Kempe was unchaste, but after receiving her calling from God, she reformed herself. She started two businesses--a brewery, and a grain mill--but both failed. She eventually negotiated a chaste marriage with her husband, and spend her life going on pilgrimages to holy sites.

It offers an important perspective on the middle-class experience in the Middle Ages.

A rhyme that pairs 2 or more rhyming syllables. The final syllable is often unstressed.

Example: Acquainted/Painted, passion/fashion

A pair of phrases, in which the second is a reversed form of the first.

EXAMPLE: "Pleasure's a sin, and sometimes sin's a pleasure." - Lord Byron

A group of late-17th/early-18th century poets who used direct and colloquial language. They favored casual subjects, and tended to avoid big issues (like God, religion, or morality) to focus on the mundane and everyday. They distrusted overearnestness/overintensity in poetry.

They were contemporaries of the Metaphysical and Graveyard poets, and included Ben Jonson, Thomas Carew, and Robert Herrick.

When I was one-and-twenty
  I heard a wise man say,
`Give crowns and pounds and guineas
  But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
  But keep your fancy free.'
But I was one-and-twenty
  No use to talk to me.
 
When I was one-and-twenty
  I heard him say again,
`The heart out of the bosom
  Was never given in vain;
'Tis paid with sighs a plenty
  And sold for endless rue.'
And I am two-and-twenty
  And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.

Remember me when I am gone away,
    Gone far away into the silent land;
    When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
    Remember me when no more day by day
    You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
    And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
    For if the darkness and corruption leave
    A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
    Than that you should remember and be sad.

 Lydia is obsessed with the romantic ideals of love she reads in popular novels of the time, and is drawn into a relationship with Captain Jack Absolute, who pretends to be a poor soldier called Ensign Beverly. Lydia finds the idea of eloping with a poor soldier romantic. In reality, Captain Absolute is a rich gentleman, the son of Sir Anthony Absolute. Both Sir Anthony and Mrs Malaprop, Lydia's aunt, want to prevent their secret romance. Mrs Malaprop wants Lydia to marry for financial reasons. The marriage arranged by Sir Anthony is, in fact, with Lydia, but when Lydia finds out who Ensign Beverly really is, she refuses to marry him, clinging to her romantic notions of eloping with a poor soldier.

The hero is Charles Marlow, a wealthy young man who is being forced by his family to consider a potential bride whom he has never met. He is anxious about meeting her, because he suffers from shyness and can only behave naturally with women of a lower class. He sets out with a friend to travel to the home of his prospective in-laws, the Hardcastles, but they become lost on the road.

While the bride-to-be is awaiting his arrival, her half-brother, Tony Lumpkin (one of literature's great comic characters), while out riding, comes across the two strangers, and, realising their identity, plays a practical joke by telling them that they are a long way from their destination and will have to stay overnight at an inn. The "inn" he directs them to is in fact the home of his parents. When they arrive, their hosts, who have been expecting them, go out of their way to make them welcome. However, the two men, believing themselves in a hostelry, behave rudely.

Meanwhile, Tony's sister, Kate, learning of the error and also acquainted with her suitor's shyness, masquerades as a serving-maid in order to get to know him. He falls in love with her and plans to elope with her. Needless to say, all misunderstandings are sorted out in the end, and Charles and Kate live happily ever after.

Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

O well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill:
But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.

A characterization of a sense impression in a seemingly-inappropriate way, such as a taste-sensation with a visual-descriptor.

Example: "A deafening yellow".