<verse-group> Verse Form for Poetry

Song, poem, or verse.

Usage/Remarks

Formatting of Verse: No serious attempt has been made to encode the look or visual form of poetry. But in acknowledgment that many journals do publish poems and that poems are a little like tables in that formatting may be significant, a few basic hooks have been added to indicate line styling and indentation:
Related Elements
Poetry may also be tagged with the <preformat> element if spacing is critical; however, most poetry should be tagged with the <verse-group> element, which may not preserve the exact look-and-feel, but is more likely to be displayed in a proportional font.
Attributes

Base Attributes

Models and Context
May be contained in
Description
The following, in order:
Content Model
<!ELEMENT  verse-group  %verse-group-model;                          >
Expanded Content Model
(label?, title?, subtitle?, (verse-line | verse-group)+, (attrib |
permissions)*)
Tagged Samples
Inside section
...
<sec>
 <title>Buy or Lease?<break/>
  Two Models for Scholarly Information<break/>
  at the End (or the Beginning) of an Era</title>
 <verse-group>
  <verse-line>Some say the world will end in fire,</verse-line>
  <verse-line>Some say in ice.</verse-line>
  <verse-line>From what I&rsquo;ve tasted of desire</verse-line>
  <verse-line>I hold with those who favor fire.</verse-line>
  <verse-line>But if it had to perish twice,</verse-line>
  <verse-line>I think I know enough of hate</verse-line>
  <verse-line>To say that for destruction ice</verse-line>
  <verse-line>Is also great</verse-line>
  <verse-line>And would suffice.</verse-line>
  <attrib>&mdash;Robert Frost &ldquo;Fire and Ice&rdquo;</attrib>
 </verse-group>
 <p>Within living memory, our use of print (static) information
  has been governed by copyright law and the practices that have 
  evolved around it. Enter electronic information, where publishers 
  deliver it with licenses and new rules, a very different framework 
  from copyright. ...</p></sec>
...
With a title
...
<verse-group>
 <title>A Cradle Song</title>
 <verse-line>Sweet dreams, form a shade</verse-line>
 <verse-line>O&rsquo;er my lovely infant&rsquo;s head;</verse-line>
 <verse-line>Sweet dreams of pleasant streams</verse-line>
 <verse-line>By happy, silent, moony beams.</verse-line>
 <verse-line>Sweet sleep, with soft down</verse-line>
 <verse-line>Weave thy brows an infant crown.</verse-line>
 <verse-line>Sweep sleep, Angel mild,</verse-line>
 <verse-line>Hover o&rsquo;er my happy child.</verse-line>
 ...
 <attrib>William Blake</attrib>
</verse-group>
...
@indent-level
...
<verse-group>
  <verse-line><sc>There</sc> was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,</verse-line>
  <verse-line indent-level="1">The earth, and every common sight,</verse-line>
  <verse-line indent-level="3">To me did seem</verse-line>
  <verse-line indent-level="1">Apparell&rsquo;d in celestial light,</verse-line>
  <verse-line>The glory and the freshness of a dream.</verse-line>
  <verse-line>It is not now as it hath been of yore;&mdash;</verse-line>
  <verse-line indent-level="2">Turn wheresoe&rsquo;er I may,</verse-line>
  <verse-line indent-level="3">By night or day,</verse-line>
  <verse-line>The things which I have seen I now can see no more.</verse-line>
  <attrib>From Wordsworth&rsquo;s &ldquo;Ode: Intimations of 
    Immortality&rdquo; (1807).</attrib>
</verse-group>
...
With <attrib>
...
<verse-group>
 <verse-line>When dredful swelling seas, through boisterous windy blastes</verse-line>
 <verse-line>So tosse the shippes, that al for nought, serues ancor sayle and
  mastes.</verse-line>
 <verse-line>Who takes not pleasure then, safely on shore to rest,</verse-line>
 <verse-line>And see with dreade and depe despayre, how shipmen are distrest.</verse-line>
 <verse-line>Not that we pleasure take, when others felen smart,</verse-line>
 <verse-line>Our gladnes groweth to see their harmes, and yet to fele no parte.</verse-line>
 <attrib>(Tottel 1903:159)</attrib>
</verse-group>
...
Related Resources