Help:Poem

The poem extension allows for easy inclusion of poems and similar material in MediaWiki pages, by simply putting them between &lt;poem></poem&gt; tags, instead of adding &lt;br&gt; to the end or : to the beginning of every line, which is common practice now. The extension preserves wikilinks, bolding, etc. if they are present in the poem, as well as indenting lines which start with spaces.

Style
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, while indented text can be used for simple examples to prevent filling and draw a nice blue box, it can be hard to read in some cases, since long lines aren't broken. A similar, but somewhat better effect can be obtained with



When applied to the above example, the result is as follows:

 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.

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