Caesura

In modern European poetry, a caesura is defined as a natural phrase end, especially when occurring in the middle of a line.

In verse scansion, the modern caesura mark is a double vertical bar ⟨||⟩ or ⟨

Homeric lines more commonly employ feminine caesurae; this preference is observed to an even higher degree among the Alexandrian poets.

The pentameter often displayed a clearer caesura, as in this example from Propertius: In Old English, the caesura has come to represent a pronounced pause in order to emphasize lines in Old English poetry that would otherwise be considered to be a droning, monotonous line.

[5] This makes the caesura arguably more important to the Old English verse than it was to Latin or Greek poetry.

[6] An example of the use of danda as caesurae in Indian poetry is in the "dohas" or couplet poems of Sant Kabir Das, a 15th-century poet who was central to the Bhakti movement in Hinduism.

[10] Lines composed of the same number of syllables with division in different place are considered to be completely different metrical patterns.

In Polish accentual-syllabic verse caesura is not so important but iambic tetrametre (very popular today) is usually 9(5+4).

It can, however, be used for rhetorical effect, as in Alexander Pope's line: In music, a caesura denotes a brief, silent pause, during which metrical time is not counted.

In musical notation, a caesura is marked by double oblique lines, similar to a pair of slashes ⟨//⟩.