A pause or break in a line of verse that modifies the regularity of accents; a caesura occurs after a punctuation mark or at a natural break in phrasing Examples: 1 "I'm Nobody! Who are You?" by Emily Dickinson (p 577) L1: I'm Nobody! Who are you? Are you - Nobody - too? In this passage, the dashes in line two create pauses to set "Nobody" apart from the rest of the line 2 "The Man He Killed" by Thomas Hardy (p 590) L9: I shot him dead because - Because he was my foe, Just so: my foe of course he was; In this example, the pause created by the colon places emphasis on what occurs after it 3 "My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning (p 583) L37: Quite clear to such and one, and say, "Just this Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss, Or there exceed the mark" - and if she let The semi-colon, in the above example, creates a break that causes the reader to look at the quote in two parts, while the dash sets the quote apart from the rest of the poem
a break or pause (usually for sense) in the middle of a verse line a pause or interruption (as in a conversation); "after an ominous caesura the preacher continued
A natural pause or break in a line of poetry, usually near the middle of the line There is a caesura right after the question mark in the first line of this sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning: How do I love thee? Let me count the ways
a stop or pause in a metrical line, often marked by punctuation or by a grammatical boundary, such as a phrase or clause When a caesura splits the line in equal parts, it is termed medial When the pause occurs towards the beginning or end of the line, it is termed, respectively, initial and terminal