heptameter

1. A metrical unit consisting of seven feet.
2. A line of verse consisting of seven metrical feet.

heptameter [hep‐tamm‐it‐er], a metrical verse line composed of seven feet (see foot). In the context of English verse, in which a heptameter is a seven‐stress line, it is often referred to as a fourteener. It is sometimes known as a septenary.

A line of verse consisting of seven metrical feet. It is also called a septenarius, especially in Latin prosody.

Heptameter is one or more lines of verse containing seven metrical feet (usually fourteen or twenty-one syllables).

An example from Lord Byron's Youth and Age:

'Tis but as ivy-leaves around the ruin'd turret wreathe,

All green and wildly fresh without, but worn and gray beneath.

O could I feel as I have felt, or be what I have been,

Or weep as I could once have wept o'er many a vanish'd scene,-

As springs in deserts found seem sweet, all brackish though they be,

So midst the wither'd waste of life, those tears would flow to me!

See also

• Fourteener (poetry)
• Archilochian
• Iambic heptameter

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