How to Put a Poem in MLA Format

Quoting Three Lines or Less

• 1

  Enclose the quote within quotation marks.

• 2

  Preserve line breaks by including slashes between lines. For example:

  Robert Frost compares aging to the changing seasons when he writes "Nature's first green is gold, / her hardest hue to hold."

• 3

  Cite the line numbers parenthetically directly after quoting. When you are citing three lines or less, place your citation before the concluding period. For example:

  Robert Frost compares aging to the changing seasons when he writes "Nature's first green is gold, / her hardest hue to hold" (1-2).

Quoting Four or More Lines

• 4

  Quote four or more lines of poetry within a block of text. Preserve line breaks by breaking lines exactly as they are broken in the poem. Do not enclose your quote in quotation marks. For example:

  Robert Frost compares aging to the changing seasons when he writes:

  Nature's first green is gold,

  Her hardest hue to hold.

  Her early leaf's a flower;

  But only so an hour.

• 5

  Indent each line of the poem 10 spaces from the left margin.

• 6

  Cite the line numbers parenthetically directly after quoting. When you are citing four or more lines of poetry, place your citation after the concluding period. For example:

  Nature's first green is gold,

  Her hardest hue to hold.

  Her early leaf's a flower;

  But only so an hour. (1-4)