Caesura

Type in the content of your page here. A **caesura** is a usually rhetorical break in the flow of sound in the middle of a line of verse. A caesura is often made obvious by a mark of punctuation. Ex. U/U/U/**.**/U/…

An example of caesura in Philip Larkin’s “An Arundel Tomb” can be found in the last line of the fourth stanza:

“The air would change to soundless damage, Turn the old tentantry away; How soon succeeding eyes begin To look, not read. Rigidly they ”

In this example, the period after “read” followed by “Rigidly they” creates a break in the line that disrupts the consistent rhythm of the poem and generates an obvious pause.

Another example of caesura can be found in Larkin’s “Love Songs in Age” in the last line of the second stanza:

“That hidden freshness sung, That certainty of time laid up in store As when she played them first. But, even more ”

A caesura is present in this example subsequent to “first” followed by a period and “But, even more.” Until this, the rhythm of the verse was quite consistent; however the period and beginning of a new thought break the line into two chunks that make for an obvious pause and disturbance in rhythm.