Cæsura is a technical term in prosody, given to an audible pause that breaks up a long line of verse.
The cæsura is an important part of Greek and Latin versification, where it plays an important role especially in the heroic verse form of the dactylic hexameter. Vergil's opening line of the Æneid:
- Arma virumque cano, || Troiæ qui primus ab oris
- ("I sing of arms and the man, who first from the shores of Troy. . .")
- Cynthia prima fuit; || Cynthia finis erit.
- ("Cynthia was the first; Cynthia will be the last" -- Horace)
- Hwæt! we Gar-Dena || on geardagum
- ("Lo! we Spear-Danes, in days of yore. . .")
- I loked on my left half || as þe lady me taughte
- And was war of a womman || worþeli ycloþed.
- ("I looked on my left side, as the lady told me to, and perceived an expensively dressed woman.")
Cæsuras can occur in later forms of verse; in these, though, they are usually optional. The so-called ballad metre, or the common metre of the hymnodists, us usually thought of as a line of iambic tetrameter followed by a line of trimeter, but it can also be considered a line of heptameter with a fixed cæsura at the fourth foot. Considering the break as a cæsura in these verse forms, rather than a beginning of a new line, explains how sometimes multiple cæsuras can be found in this verse form:
- From the hag and hungry goblin || that into rags would rend ye,
- And the spirits that stand || by the naked man || in the Book of Moons, defend ye!
- To err is human; || to forgive, divine.