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Explore the Craft of Writing Poetry Indian Verse Regional Verse IV.Hindi poetry is a descendant of Sanskrit and is found primarily in the North, West and Central India. Hindi is the official language of India. The region is known for its romantic poetry. The Doha is a Hindi stanzaic form employing a rhyming couplet with long syllabic lines.The Doha is also used in Urdu verse. This form often steps away from the Hindi tradition of romantic verse and can also be written as didactic verse or used in longer narrative verse. The elements of the Doha are: stanzaic, written in any number of couplets. syllabic, each line is made up of 24 syllables and is paused by caesura at the end of the 13th syllable, making the line two phrases of 13 and 11 syllables. The couplet can be arranged as a quatrain breaking the line at the caesura. rhymed, aa bb cc commonly used for proverbs, though can be for used for longer narratives, romance or didactic poetry. Vanquished in the Night by Judi Van Gorder The starless night drops down into the silent forest, small creatures scurry to secure safe haven. Peerless predators have eyes accustom to the dark, they stalk weaker prey with guile until craven. or if you choose to break the line at the caesura: The starless night drops down into the silent forest, ----------- small creatures scurry to secure safe haven. Peerless predators have eyes accustom to the dark, ------------ they stalk weaker prey with guile until craven. Isaac's Legacy by Eric Wharton When Isaac Lefever fled from his home in Lorraine, in sixty and nine of century fifteen; all his family wanted was to live by their faith, but jackbooted soldiers arrived unforeseen. His kinfolk lay slaughtered to the beat of a death drum, his parents with three sisters and brothers three; he took naught but a bible tucked away in his arm, and helped by a matron named Madam Ferree. He heard of a land where faith was in high esteem held, at only sixteen he had hopeful intent; to the new world he sailed, a Huguenot refugee, well-girded for what he could not circumvent. As centuries have passed his escape bears repeating, his Bible still rests in a Penn's Wood retreat— there are those who have come to look over it's pages, a testament to his bold faith and his feat. Now heirs of his spirit live under a threat, three thousand were killed in the course of a year— Tortured and dying from hate in a world-wide pogrom, now millions live by the caprice of a spear. Newspaper journalists remain surprisingly mute about faithful who form a martyrs parade, as the bulk of all the world's folks in patience hold on for what Ike’s Bible has said: justice delayed. Regional Verse Forms