Alliterative verse

Alliterative verse is a verse form which has alliteration (i.e., the repetition of consonants or consonantal sounds) as a structural feature, i.e., there is alliteration at fixed points throughout the poem, and so alliteration has a similar status to that of rhyme or metre in other verse forms. Alliterative verse was a common verse form in the poetry of the Germanic languages in the Middle Ages. (Clearly alliterative verse, as a verse form, must not be confused with verse in which the poet uses alliteration only occasionally, to produce a particular effect - a poem such as Wilfred Owen’s Anthem for Doomed Youth, even though it makes memorable use of alliteration in a number of lines, is not an example of alliterative verse.)

While the details vary, and over some of them there is scholarly disagreement, it is generally accepted that the following four points identify the basic or essential features of alliterative verse:

every line of the poem is divided into two half-lines. (Each half-line may be called a hemistich or (rather confusingly) a verse; and the two half-lines of a single line may be referred to as, respectively, the a-line and the b-line);

between the two half-lines of a single line there is a clear break or caesura;

each half-line contains two stressed syllables (sometimes known as ‘lifts’), while the number and position of unstressed syllables (sometimes known as ‘dips’) may vary;

there is always, in each line of the poem, alliteration between the initial sounds of the first stressed syllable in the a-line and the first stressed syllable in the b-line, and sometimes, also, between the initial sounds of the two stressed syllables in the a-line.

Here, as an example of alliterative verse, is The Age of Anxiety by W.H. Auden (1907-1973), with the caesura between the two parts of each line marked by ||, and the alliterative initial sounds of the relevant stressed syllables printed in bold type:

 Now the news. ||  Night raids on
 Five cities. ||  Fires started.
 Pressure applied  ||  by pincer movement
 In threatening thrust. ||  Third Division
 Enlarges beachhead. ||  Lucky charm
 Saves sniper. ||  Sabotage hinted
 In steel-mill stoppage.

Alliterative verse in English poetry

Alliterative verse is the verse form of the poems attributed to Caedmon (floruit 670), a monk in the monastery at Whitby in North Yorkshire; and of Beowulf, an 8th century poem about events in the life of its eponymous hero. In fact alliterative verse was the standard verse form in Old English until replaced, in the 11th century, by verse forms based on metre and rhyme. Even so, it is the verse form of some of the great poems of the Late Middle Ages, such as Piers Plowman by William Langland (c1338-1386) and the anonymous Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. It has not been much used by English poets in the last five centuries, though in the last century it was used, very occasionally, by, e.g., W.H. Auden (1907-1973), J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973), Cecil Day Lewis (1904-1972), and Ted Hughes (1930-1998).

Alliterative verse in the poetry of other Germanic languages

Examples in Old High German include Muspilli (a 9th century poem, of which only a 100-line fragment has survived, about the fate of the soul after death) and Hildebrandslied (also 9th century and surviving only in fragments, about Hildebrand’s tragic encounter with his son in battle). In Old Norse there are the Eddas, two 13th century collections of poems. In Icelandic the tradition of composition in alliterative verse has continued without a break from the settlement of Iceland by the Vikings in the 9th century to the present day.