Blank verse is unrhymed iambic pentameter. Each line typically contains five metrical feet, each foot an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one, and the lines do not rhyme with one another.

Shakespeare wrote most of his plays in blank verse; Milton used it for the whole of Paradise Lost. The form offers the flexibility of speech while retaining a subtle rhythmic pulse. Because there is no rhyme to force line endings, enjambment and variation in stress can create a wide range of effects—from formal dignity to near-conversational ease. Later poets adapted blank verse for meditative and narrative purposes, sometimes loosening the meter further.

Blank verse is distinct from free verse, which abandons regular meter altogether, and from rhymed iambic pentameter, which adds end-rhyme. Its power lies in the tension between the expected pattern and the expressive departures from it. When the meter is handled with skill, the reader feels the rhythm without becoming conscious of counting syllables.

Five iambs to the line and no rhyme at the end—that is the basic contract of blank verse.