Hudibrastic verse (or Hudibrastics) [hew‐di‐bras‐tik], a kind of comic verse written in octosyllabic couplets with many ridiculously forced feminine rhymes. It is named after the long mock‐heroic poem Hudibras (1663–78), a satire on Puritanism by the English poet Samuel Butler. These lines from Canto III give some impression of the style:
He would an elegy compose
On maggots squeez'd out of his nose;
In lyric numbers write an ode on
His mistress, eating a black‐pudden;
And, when imprison'd air escap'd her,
It puft him with poetic rapture.
Several poets, including Jonathan Swift, wrote Hudibrastic verse in imitation, and the form became popular in poetic
burlesques. See also
doggerel,
light verse.
