The Latin and Greek model, however, did not seem to encourage much esthetic effort in short poems of English verse until the time of the romantic movement.

Then, both in France and England, many brief forms of poetry made their appearance.

In France, Victor Hugo attempted composition in astonishingly varied forms of verse--some forms actually consisting of only two syllables to a line.

With this surprisingly short measure begins one of Hugo's most remarkably early poems, "Les Djins," representing the coming of evil spirits with a storm, their passing over the house where a man is at prayer, and departing into the distance again.

Beginning with only two syllables to the line, the measure of the poem gradually widens as the spirits approach, becomes very wide, very long and sonorous as they reach the house, and again shrinks back to lines of two syllables as the sound of them dies away.