Verb acting as a noun clause (usually the -ing form of the verb)

Ex: Eating worms is bad for your health.

Verb used for issuing commands

Ex: Do it now!

Verb in the present tense

Ex: John plays with the ball.

Unconjugated verb with 'to' in front of it

Ex: To be, or not to be.  

The '-ed' (past) form of a verb

Ex: John has played with the ball many times.  

In a sentence, it is further information about the subject (contains the verb and added info)

Ex: This GRE test is really bogus.

Verb used to express conditional or counterfactual statements.

Ex: If I were a rich man...

Word that introduces a subordinate clause

Ex: Since you're awake, I'll turn on the tv.

Group of words acting as a noun

Ex: Playing the banjo is extremely annoying.

Expression of direct address

Ex: Sit, Ubu, sit.  **Establishes who is being addressed.

14-line iambic pentameter poem in abbaabba cdecde.  The first eight are called the ocatave.  The final six are the sestet.

Ex: Milton's "When I Consider How My Light is Spent"

When I consider how my light is spent

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,

And that one talent which is death to hide

Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent...

Characterized by internal alliteration of lines and a strong midline pause called a caesura

Ex: 'Beowulf'

Protected in war; so warriors earn

Their fame, and wealth is shaped with a sword

Unrhymed verse without a strict meter

Ex: Whitman's 'Song of Myself'

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you

I loaf and invite my sould,

I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.  

Unrhymed iambic pentameter verse

Ex: Tennyson's 'Ulysses'

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To Strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield

Three-line stanzas with an interlocking rhyme scheme (aba bcb cdc...)

Ex: Invented by Dante for 'Divine Comedy'

Midway on our life's journey, I found myself

In dark woods, the right road lost.  To tell

About those woods is hard--so tangled and rough...

Nine-line stanzas; the first eight are iambic pentameter; the final line, in iambic hexameter, is an alexandrine (ababbcbcc)

Ex: Created by Edmund Spenser for 'The Faerie Queen'

Seven-line iambic pentameter stanza (ababbcc)

Ex: Sir Thomas Wyatt's 'They Flee From Me That Sometime Did Me Seek'

They flee from me that sometime did me seek

With naked foot stalking in my chamber.

I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,

That now are wild, and do not remember.

Eight-line stanza, usually iambic pentameter (abababcc)

Ex: Lord Byron's 'Don Juan'

Stanza composed of four lines of iambic tetrameter (abba)

Ex: Tennyson's 'In Memoriam A.H.H.'

I hold it true, whate'er befall;I feel it when I sorrow most;'Tis better to have loved and lostThan never to have loved at all.

The typical stanza of the folk ballad.  The length of the lines in ballad stanza, just as in sprung rhythm and Old English verse, is determined by the number of stressed syllables only (abcb)

Ex: Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'

Day after day, day after day,We stuck, nor breath nor motion;As idle as a painted shipUpon a painted ocean.

19-line form rhyming aba aba aba aba abaa.  It's most noticeable characteristic is the repetition of the first and thir lines throughout the poem: aba ab1 ab3 ab1 ab3 ab13

Ex: Dylan Thomas's 'Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night'

39-line poem of six stanzas of six lines each and a final stanza--called an envoi--of three lines.  Rhyme plyas no part; instead, one of the six words is used as the end word of each of the poem's lines according to a fixed pattern.

Ex: Kipling's 'Sestina of Tramp-Royal'

Petrarchan--0 final couplets (abba abba cde cde)

Shakespearean--1 final couplet (abab cdcd efef gg)

Spenserian--1 final couplet plus 2 couplets in the body (abab bcbc cdcd ee)

"Helping verb" (often a form of 'be', 'have', or 'do')

Ex: I am working on it.  

I have worked on it.

I did work on it.