Help:Poem

Poem
Author(s)	Nikola Smolenski Brion Vibber Steve Sanbeg
Extension link	MediaWiki.org
Description
Adds <poem> tag for poem formatting
Default?
UCP?
GP?

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

How it works

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.

Beginning a line with a colon (:) will wrap the line in a <span class="mw-poem-indented" style="margin-left: 1em;"> tag with a left margin of +1em for each colon. You may use the mw-poem-indented class to apply additional styling to indented lines.

A simple example

The following text in Source mode:

<poem>
In Xanadu did [[wikipedia:Kubla Khan|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.
</poem>

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: <poem style="text-align: center; border: 2px dashed #2f6fab; background-color: #eeeeee; color: #000; padding: 1em;">

Styling example

The following text in Source mode:

<poem style="text-align: center; border: 2px dashed #2f6fab; background-color: #eeeeee; color: #000; padding: 1em;">
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.
</poem>

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 (<p> tag) inside the <div>. Occasionally this is not desired; using the compact option (<poem compact>) suppresses paragraphs in the poem, to allow adjacent compact poems to blend together.

See also

• HTML and Wikitext help
• Extension:Poem at MediaWiki.org

Further help and feedback

• Browse and search other help pages at Help:Contents
• Check Fandom Community Central for sources of further help and support
• Check Contacting Fandom for how to report any errors or unclear steps in this article