caesuras

A caesura is a pause within a line of verse, dividing the line into two half-lines or hemistichs. The term comes from the Latin caesura, meaning a cutting or cutting off. Caesuras can arise from punctuation, syntactic breaks, or natural speech rhythms, and they help shape the line’s tempo, emphasis, and expressive impact.

The most common type is the medial caesura, a pause near the line’s midpoint. Poets also distinguish between masculine and feminine caesuras: a masculine caesura occurs after a stressed syllable, yielding a brief, abrupt pause; a feminine caesura follows an unstressed syllable, producing a longer pause. In practice, caesuras may be indicated in print by punctuation or by a natural breath in performance, and they function to create variety within a metrical scheme.

Caesura figures prominently across literary traditions. It is central in many Germanic and early Latin or Greek meters, where the line is often felt as two balanced halves separated by a deliberate pause. In English poetry, caesuras contribute to a speech-like or rhythmic diversity, from the Romantic era to contemporary verse, and are frequently used to heighten dramatic or reflective resonance. They are distinct from enjambment, which carries sense across line boundaries without a pause; a caesura causes a pause within the line itself.

Example: The woods are lovely, / dark and deep. The pause after lovely illustrates a caesura in a single line.