Verse is called the set of words that are subject to a certain measure and that maintain a cadence. The lines are the first ordered unit of the poems. Regular, on the other hand, is one that obeys the rules or is measured.
Regular lines show the same number of syllables in each line, respecting the rhyme. This means that if we analyze the stanza of a poem that has four lines, and the four lines are made up of twelve syllables, we are dealing with regular lines. For example:
I’m not afraid of loneliness
I like loneliness
I hope to live alone
yes i really want this
As you can see in this example, the stanza is made up of four lines (“I’m not afraid of loneliness / I like loneliness / I hope to live alone / Yes, I really want that”). Each of the verses, on the other hand, is made up of nine syllables. In this way, we can say that the stanza in question is composed of regular verses. It is important to establish and make it clear that they are regular verses, as long as they meet the characteristics that we have exposed, regardless of whether they belong to what is known as major art or minor art. Another example that we can use to understand what the regular verse is is the following. It belongs to the work entitled “I looked at the walls of my country”, which is a sonnet by the great writer of the Spanish Golden Age Francisco de Quevedo. Specifically, it is the first quartet of the same and allows us to perceive that all the verses that compose it are hendecasyllables and also have an assonance rhyme: “I looked at the walls of my country,
if a strong time has already collapsed,
of the race of old age,
for whom its value has expired. However, there are too many examples of great authors to understand the type of versification that concerns us. Thus, we can also find it in the poem by San Juan de la Cruz entitled “Dark Night”. Different is the case of irregular verses, which have a different number of syllables. The stanza “I feel like I am a bird / Fast, free / Capable of reaching the sky / With those who love me” presents verses with different numbers of syllables: they are, therefore, irregular verses. This type of versification, as we have already mentioned, is absolutely free both in the number of metric syllables and in rhyme. In addition to the above, we can take as an example part of the poem entitled “Wine, first, pure”, by the writer from Huelva and Nobel Prize for Literature (1956) Juan Ramón Jiménez: “And he took off his coat,
and appeared all naked…
Oh, passion of my life, poetry
naked, mine forever.” The regular verses, in short, allow the development of the so-called regular versification, which is made up of equal rhythmic units.
