Help:Poem

The poem extension allows for easy inclusion of poems and similar material on articles, by simply putting them between  tags, instead of adding   to the end or   to the beginning of every line.

UCP
The extension preserves wikilinks, bolding, etc. if they are present in the poem, as well as lines that begin with spaces. Note that the spaces will be rendered in whatever font is being used and will have different widths based on the font.

On the UCP, beginning a line with a colon will wrap the line in a   tag with a left margin of   for each colon. You may use the  class to apply additional styling to indented lines.

A simple example on UCP
The following text in Source mode: In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree:
 * Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round: And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. renders as: In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree:
 * Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round: And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

Styling a poem
The poem text is wrapped in a div, which has no style by default, but inherits any style or class option passed to the poem.

For example:

Styling example
The following text in Source mode:  The limerick packs laughs anatomical Into space that is quite economical. But the good ones I’ve seen So seldom are clean And the clean ones so seldom are comical. renders as:  The limerick packs laughs anatomical Into space that is quite economical. But the good ones I’ve seen So seldom are clean And the clean ones so seldom are comical.

"Compact" option
Normally, the parser renders each poem in a paragraph ( tag) inside the. Occasionally this is not desired; using the compact option suppresses paragraphs in the poem, to allow adjacent compact poems to blend together.

Legacy
The poem extension on legacy wikis works as described above with a few exceptions:
 * Beginning a line with a colon will wrap the line in   tags which add additional margins to the text.
 * The paragraph tag may not wrap the entire poem text, making the spacing uneven.