Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jun 21, 2026

Stichic

Poetry made up of lines of the same approximate meter and length, not broken up into stanzas, is called stichic. Most poetry from the Old English period is considered stichic. Most English poetry written in blank verse, such as the epic Paradise Lost by John Milton, is stichic. A more contemporary (1790's) example is Joanna Baillie's "Hay making".

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Poetry made up of lines of the same approximate meter and length, not broken up into stanzas, is called stichic (as opposed to stanzaic). Most poetry from the Old English period is considered stichic. Most English poetry written in blank verse, such as the epic Paradise Lost by John Milton, is stichic. A more contemporary (1790's) example is Joanna Baillie's "Hay making".123

Greek epic, in dactylic hexameter, as is Latin epic whether in hexameter or (in very old poets) Saturnian. Poetic dramatic dialogue, whether in English iambic pentameter or Greek iambic trimeter, also tends to be stichic in nature.

References

References

  1. Oxford English Dictionary 2nd ed. 1989
  2. The New Princeton Encyclopedia for Poetry and Poetics, 1993. Entry for stichos
  3. Fussell, Paul. Poetic Meter and Poetic Form. Rev. ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979.