Dialogue verse in Swahili (mashairi ya kujibizana) has not hitherto been brought to the notice of Western students of the language. Examples were collected by scholars like Taylor and Werner, but were not prepared for publication. Yet this type of verse is one of the few literary exercises still practised by Swahili writers in the vernacular press. Modern Swahili verse fails to retain the variety of theme and prosodic form of the earlier poetry, chiefly because the art of versification based upon Arabian models has never become part of the main stream of Bantu cultural activity in East Africa. All the more reason, it may be held, for identifying, in the earlier verse, the kind of poetry which is still written.