Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993.
POETRY, THE QUOTATION OF
A stanza or a couplet should usually be reproduced as it looks on the original page:
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies.
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
’Tis folly to be wise.
—Thomas Gray, Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, 96–100
If the passage is shorter, or if it involves parts of lines, you may print it within quotation marks in the regular lines of your paragraph, using the virgule to indicate the ends of lines in the verse, as in Frost ends his Fire and Ice with this remark about the force of hate: “… that for destruction ice / Is also great / And would suffice” (7–9).
