masculine caesura

In prosody, a masculine caesura is a pause within a poetic line that occurs after a stressed or long syllable. This type of caesura, along with the feminine caesura (which follows an unstressed or short syllable), helps to break the regularity of a poem's meter.123

While caesuras can sometimes highlight the formal structure of a line, they more frequently introduce the natural rhythms and phrasing of speech into the metrical pattern. This can prevent metrical monotony and emphasize the meaning of the lines. The term "caesura" itself comes from the Latin word for "to cut," reflecting its function as a break or interruption.14