Poems from three volumes of Walter Donway's poetry are collected here. His poetry is in "the Great Tradition," as he explains in his introduction. That tradition, as old as poetry itself in English, recognizes that the defining characteristic of verse is metrical form. All great poetry written in English has such a form: an underlying pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables, against which the poet achieves most specifically poetic effects by means of expressive variations. Rhyme, of course, is another specifically poetic effect, and the one most beloved by readers but not the essence of poetry. For example, "blank verse" extensively employed by Shakespeare is unrhymed iambic pentameter.