[1v4n0]

Hey, thanks. That looks good in my kindle non-touch (this one), and I think in books where there isn't only poetry this could be a case of "graceful degradation": if you have a reader that supports pseudo-elements you see the numbers, but if you don't you're still able to read the text.

Granted, if it is a long poem we're talking about this might not be a viable solution. In this latter case I'd go for manually inserting the numbers befor each 5th verse, and the spaces in the other lines, combined with a monospaced font (like they do here). Or I wouldn't, after all. Sounds like a hell of a job

Anyway, if you add this

ul {
    counter-reset: counter;
    margin-left: 1.25em;
	text-indent: -.5em;
}

The verses become more readable

EDIT I was just suggested another solution, which does not involve the counter: use an <OL> instead of<UL>, and hide all the numbers but the 5n-th by giving them a transparent background.

Spoiler:

ol li:before {
    width:100px;
    height:30px;
    background-color:#FFF;
    content:"";
    display:inline-block;
    position:relative;
    margin-left: -100px;
}
ol li:nth-child(5n):before {
    background-color:transparent;
}

This looks fine in calibre and sigil, and in ADE it just shows all the numbers.

However, besides the dot after the numbers, which apparently is unavoidable w/o the counter, this solution raises a weird problem on my kindle: it only works for the first page. Once you turn it, all the numbers show. On the "Paperwhite" it works fine though.

Anyway, credits go to this guy.