(Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window
by Jan Vermeer, 1632-1675, Dutch painter)
An epigraph is a short quotation or poem at the head of a book or a chapter.
The verse below is an example of an epigram, which the poet Coleridge defined as “A dwarfish whole, / Its body brevity, its wit its soul.”
WRITING
When words we want, Love teaches to indite*;
And what we blush to speak, She bids us write.
~ Robert Herrick (1591-1674), the greatest of the English Cavalier poets
* indite – to put into words, compose
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