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A song; a lay; a little poem intended to be sung. "Religious, martial, or civil ditties." Milton.ditties sing. Sandys.

A book; esp., a collection of poems written by one author; as, the divan of Hafiz. [Persia]

so, import or meaning of a sentence or discourse; aim. He has made the drift of the whole poem a compliment on his country in general. Addison. Now thou knowest my drift. Sir W. Scott.

A division of a poem corresponding to a canto; a poem or song. [R.]

fe's early morning sky. Keble. The forms of its earlier manhood. Longfellow. The earliest poem he composed was in his seventeenth summer. J. C. Shairp. Early English (Philol.) See the Note under English. -- Early English architecture, the first of the pointed or Gothic styles used in England, succeeding the Norman sty…

A pastoral poem, in which shepherds are introduced conversing with each other; a bucolic; an idyl; as, the Ecloques of Virgil, from which the modern usage of the word has been established.

he author, whether human or divine; as, the animal or vegetable economy; the economy of a poem; the Jewish economy. The position which they [the verb and adjective] hold in the general economy of language. Earle. In the Greek poets, as also in Plautus, we shall see the economy . . . of poems better observed than in Ter…

A mournful or plaintive poem; a funereal song; a poem of lamentation. Shak.

An explanatory or commendatory postscript to a poem, essay, or book; -- also in the French from, l'envoi. The envoy of a ballad is the "sending" of it forth. Skeat.

Narrated in a grand style; pertaining to or designating a kind of narrative poem, usually called an heroic poem, in which real or fictitious events, usually the achievements of some hero, are narrated in an elevated style. The epic poem treats of one great, complex action, in a grand style and with fullness of detail.…

Epic. -- Ep"ic*al*ly, adv. Poems which have an epical character. Brande & C. His [Wordsworth's] longer poems (miscalled epical). Lowell.

A short poem treating concisely and pointedly of a single thought or event. The modern epigram is so contrived as to surprise the reader with a witticism or ingenious turn of thought, and is often satirical in character. Dost thou think I care for a satire or an epigram Shak.

A speech or short poem addressed to the spectators and recited by one of the actors, after the conclusion of the play. A good play no epilogue, yet . . . good plays prove the better by the help of good epilogues. Shak.

That part which embraces the main action of a play, poem, and the like, and leads on to the catastrophe; -- opposed to protasis.

A nuptial song, or poem in honor of the bride and bridegroom. The kind of poem which was called epithalamium . . . sung when the bride was led into her chamber. B. Jonson.

A species of lyric poem, invented by Archilochus, in which a longer verse is followed by a shorter one; as, the Epodes of Horace. It does not include the elegiac distich.

An epic poem; epic poetry.

An amorous composition or poem.

Just or harmonious proportion or movement, as in the composition of a poem, an edifice, a painting, or a statue.

ep"tion*a*ble*ness, n. This passage I look upon to be the most exceptionable in the whole poem. Addison.