Blank verse is poetry written in regular metrical but unrhymed lines, almost always iambic pentameters. It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the 16th century" and Paul Fussell has estimated that "about three-quarters of all English poetry is in blank verse."The first documented use of blank verse in the English language was by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey in his translation of the Æneid (composed c.