Caesura is a deliberate pause within a line of poetry, often marked by punctuation or natural breath.
The caesura — from the Latin caedere, 'to cut' — is a structural pause inside a line of verse, usually around the middle, that lets the ear regroup. Old English poetry built itself on caesura: 'Beowulf' has a strong break in nearly every line, with two stressed syllables on each side. Latin epic verse used a caesura at fixed metrical positions, and Renaissance poets translating Virgil tried to preserve it. In modern poetry the caesura is often unmarked — the reader simply hears it — but Emily Dickinson's dashes, T.S. Eliot's variable line breaks, and contemporary spoken word all weaponise the device. A well-placed pause does what punctuation can't: it silences the line for a moment so the next phrase lands harder. It is the rhythmic equivalent of a held breath.