Poetry. When quoting poetry, if the quotation is brief (fewer than four lines), include it within your text. Separate the lines of the poem with slashes, each preceded and followed by a space, in order to tell the reader where one line of the poem ends and the next begins.
In one of his best-known poems, Robert Frost remarks, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I—/ I took the one less traveled by / And that has made all the difference.”
To quote more than three lines of poetry, indent the block one inch from the left margin. Do not use quotation marks. Take care to follow the spacing, capitalization, punctuation, and other features of the original poem.
The duke in Robert Browning’s poem “My Last Duchess” is clearly a jealous, vain person, whose arrogance is illustrated through this statement:
She thanked men—good! but thanked
Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody’s gift. (lines 31–34)