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meter1

  (mē'tər) pronunciation
n.
    1. The measured arrangement of words in poetry, as by accentual rhythm, syllabic quantity, or the number of syllables in a line.
    2. A particular arrangement of words in poetry, such as iambic pentameter, determined by the kind and number of metrical units in a line.
    3. The rhythmic pattern of a stanza, determined by the kind and number of lines.
  2. Music.
    1. Division into measures or bars.
    2. A specific rhythm determined by the number of beats and the time value assigned to each note in a measure.

[Middle English, from Old English meter and from Old French metre, both from Latin metrum, from Greek metron, measure, poetic meter.]


 
 
Literary Dictionary: metre

metre (US meter), the pattern of measured sound‐units recurring more or less regularly in lines of verse. Poetry may be composed according to one of four principal metrical systems:

  (i) in quantitative metre, used in Greek and Latin, the pattern is a sequence of long and short syllables counted in groups known as feet (see foot, quantitative verse);
 (ii) in syllabic metre, as in French and Japanese, the pattern comprises a fixed number of syllables in the line (see syllabic verse);
 (iii) in accentual metre (or ‘strong‐stress metre’), found in Old English and in later English popular verse, the pattern is a regular number of stressed syllables in the line or group of lines, regardless of the number of unstressed syllables (see accentual verse);
 (iv) in accentual‐syllabic metre, the pattern consists of a regular number ofstressed syllables appropriately arranged within a fixed total numberof syllables in the line (with permissible variations including feminine endings), both stressed and unstressed syllables being counted.

 The fourth system—accentual‐syllabic metre—is the one found in most English verse in the literary tradition since Chaucer; some flexible uses of it incline towards the accentual system. However, the descriptive terms most commonly used to analyse it have, confusingly, been inherited from the vocabulary of the very different Greek and Latin quantitative system. Thus the various English metres are named after the classical feet that their groupings of stressed and unstressed syllables resemble, and the length of a metrical line is still often expressed in terms of the number of feet it contains: a dimeter has two feet, a trimeter three, a tetrameter four, a pentameter five, a hexameter six, and a heptameter seven. A simpler and often more accurate method of description is to refer to lines in either accentual or accentual‐syllabic metre according to the number of stressed syllables: thus an English tetrameter is a ‘four‐stress line’, a pentameter a ‘five‐stress line’ (these being the commonest lines in English).

 English accentual‐syllabic metres fall into two groups, according to the way in which stressed (•) and unstressed (∘) syllables alternate: in duple metres, stressed syllables alternate more or less regularly with single unstressed syllables, and so the line is traditionally described as a sequence of disyllabic (2‐syllable) feet; while in triple metres, stressed syllables alternate with pairs of unstressed syllables, and the line is seen as a sequence of trisyllabic (3‐syllable) feet.

 Of the two duple metres, by far the more common in English is the iambic metre, in which the stressed syllables are for the most part perceived as following the unstressed syllables with which they alternate (∘•∘•∘• etc.), although some variations on this pattern are accepted. In traditional analysis by feet, iambic verse is said to be composed predominantly of iambs (∘•). This iambic pentameter by John Dryden illustrates the metre:

And doom'd to death, though fated not to die.
The other duple metre, used in English less frequently than the iambic, istrochaic metre, in which the iambic pattern is reversed so that the stressed syllables are felt to be preceding the unstressed syllables with which they alternate (•∘•∘•∘ etc.); in terms of classical feet, trochaic verse is said to be made up predominantly of trochees (•∘). This trochaic tetrameter from Longfellow illustrates the metre:
Dark behind it rose the forest
It is common, though, for poets using trochaic metre to begin and end the line on a stressed syllable (see catalectic), as in Blake's line:
Tyger, tyger, burning bright
In such cases it is hard to distinguish trochaic and iambic metres. The triple metres are far less common in English, although sometimes found. In dactylic metre, named after the dactyl (•∘∘), the stressed syllables are felt to precede the intervening pairs of unstressed syllables:
Cannon in front of them
 (Tennyson: dactylic dimeter) In anapaestic metre, named after the anapaest (∘∘•), the pattern is reversed:
Of your fainting, dispirited race
 (Arnold: anapaestic trimeter) Dactylic and anapaestic verse is not usually composed purely of dactyls and anapaests, however: other feet or additional syllables are frequently combined with or substituted for them.

 All these patterns are open to different kinds of variation, of which the most common is traditionally called substitution of one foot for another (but see also demotion, promotion); for the other feet sometimes mentioned in the context of substitution, see foot. Other variations include the addition or subtraction of syllables to alter the line's length. The theory and practice of metrical verse is known as prosody or metrics, while the detailed analysis of the metrical pattern in lines of verse is called scansion. For a fuller account, consult Derek Attridge, Poetic Rhythm: An Introduction (1995).

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: metre

In poetry, the rhythmic pattern of a poetic line. Various principles have been devised to organize poetic lines into rhythmic units. Quantitative verse, the metre of Classical Greek and Latin poetry, measures the length of time required to pronounce syllables, regardless of their stress; combinations of long and short syllables form the basic rhythmic units. Syllabic verse is most common in languages that are not strongly accented, such as French or Japanese; it is based on a fixed number of syllables within a line. Accentual verse occurs in strongly stressed languages, such as the Germanic; only stressed syllables within a line are counted. Accentual-syllabic verse is the usual form in English poetry; it combines syllable counting and stress counting. The most common English metre, iambic pentameter, is a line of 10 syllables, or 5 iambic feet; each foot contains an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Free verse does not follow regular metrical patterns. See also prosody.

For more information on metre, visit Britannica.com.

 
Classical Literature Companion: Metre

1. Greek

1. In English verse the metre (rhythm) of a poem is determined by the particular arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables in the line. In Greek verse stress accent played no part; the metre of a poem depended on the number of syllables in a line and on their ‘quantity’, i.e. whether they were long or short. Hence Greek verse (and also Latin; see LATIN 1 below) is often described as ‘quantitative’, the quantity of a syllable being determined by a number of factors which governed the length of time it took to pronounce (for the rules of quantity see PROSODY). A line of Greek verse is thus composed of words which fit a pattern of long and short syllables, indicated for the purposes of analysis (scansion) by the signs _ and ⌣ respectively. At certain places in the line the pattern might allow a syllable to be either long or short; these places are indicated by the sign × (some metricians prefer ) and the position is said to be anceps, Latin for ‘ambivalent’. In general, a line of Greek verse is formed by the repetition several times of a short sequence of syllables, each sequence being known as a metron or a foot. A line of verse containing two metra is known as a dimeter, three metra a trimeter, four a tetrameter, and so on. In some metres (e.g. the dactylic hexameter; see 3 below) there is no difference between the foot and the metron and either term may be used; in others (e.g. the iambic trimeter) there are two feet to each metron, and in this case it is sometimes more satisfactory to analyse into metra because there are features which occur in each metron but only in every other foot.

Resolution and contraction. Two short syllables are roughly equivalent in duration to one long syllable, and so in many cases two short syllables may be substituted for a long, a feature known as resolution, or two short syllables contracted into a single long; these possibilities may be indicated by the signs or .

The principal feet and metra are the following:.
2. Caesura and diaeresis. In some metres it is the practice to have word-end coincide with the end of a particular metron in the line, so that at this point a word never runs over into the next metron. This feature is known as diaeresis. In other metres it is the practice for word-end to occur regularly within, rather than at the end of, a particular metron. This is known as caesura, ‘cut’. Both diaeresis and caesura are indicated by a broken line, thus ⋮.
3. The hexameter. The hexameter established itself at a very early date as the metre of epic and didactic poetry, besides being used for some hymns, for bucolic poetry, and for satire. It consists of six metra or feet, each of which is a dactyl or, its metrical equivalent, a spondee. The fifth foot was usually a dactyl. The sixth foot was always a spondee, of which the last position was anceps. Thus the hexameter pattern is As a rule, every line had a caesura, regularly occurring at one of the two alternative places in the third foot, either , the ‘masculine’ or penthemimeral (‘after the fifth position’) caesura, or , the ‘feminine’ or ‘weak’ or ‘trochaic’ caesura. The latter is commoner. For dactyls in lyric see 8 (ii) below.
4. The elegiac couplet or elegiacs. This was a very popular metre, widely diffused by the seventh century BC. It was used for epitaphs, verse inscriptions, and epigrams generally. It consists of two lines, a hexameter (see 3 above) followed by a so-called ‘pentameter’ which in fact does not contain five metra or feet in sequence, as the name suggests, but apparently two and a half followed by two and a half, thus: Spondees are excluded from the second half of the line. The position of the caesura is invariable. The sequence _⌣⌣_⌣⌣_ is often described as a hēmiepēs, ‘half a hexameter’.
5. Iambic metres. (i) The principal example is the iambic trimeter (or senarius). This metre was used for occasional poems, sometimes political, often scurrilous, and also for inscriptions. The earliest surviving iambics may be those of the poem Margitēs ascribed to Homer; Archilochus in the seventh century BC also employed iambic metres. In particular it was the metre of the spoken parts of drama, of tragedy and (with more metrical freedom) of comedy. As the name indicates, the iambic trimeter consists of three iambic metra (it is sometimes analysed less satisfactorily into six feet). A caesura regularly occurs after the first or third position of the second metron. Thus the pattern of the iambic line isin which the broken lines indicate the alternative positions of the caesura. Resolution of the first four long syllables is fairly common. The fifth long syllable is resolved rather rarely, and only when the preceding anceps is short. Occasionally the first anceps is resolved into two short syllables and followed by an (unresolved) long syllable; this feature is often described as an ‘anapaest in the first foot’. When the line ended with a word forming a cretic (_⌣_), the preceding anceps had to be short (Porson's Law). Prepositives, i.e. words that can stand only before another word or words, such as the article and prepositions, are considered for metrical purposes to be part of the following word. Thus Porson's Law would not be broken if a noun of cretic form was preceded by its article, e.g. tās sȳmphŏrās.

(ii) In Attic comedy a much freer form of the iambic trimeter is used. In general, resolution is very common.

(iii) The ‘limping’ iambic trimeter, choliambic, or scazon was invented by, or at any rate frequently used by, Hipponax; it has the form of the tragic iambic trimeter (see (i)) except that the penultimate syllable is always long, and the preceding anceps is often long also.
6. Trochaic metres. The principal trochaic metre is the trochaic tetrameter catalectic, used like the iambic trimeter for political or scurrilous verse, but also found in tragedy and, most commonly, in Attic comedy. It consists of four trochaic metra of which the last is catalectic, ‘stops short’, i.e. a syllable in the last metron (usually, as in trochaics, the final syllable) is omitted; catalexis is indicated by a caret mark at the end of the metron. There is normally diaeresis at the end of the second metron. Thus the pattern of the line is(A line that does not lack a final syllable, when a distinction is needed, is known as acatalectic.)
7. Anapaestic metres. No doubt because of their marching rhythm these are found in drama, and principally in the parodos or entrance song of the chorus, in the form of groups of anapaestic dimeters (i.e. lines containing two anapaestic metra), closing with a catalectic line. In tragedy these entrance songs are chanted rather than sung. Sung (i.e. lyric) anapaests, with greater metrical freedom, also occur in tragedy, in monodies and in dialogues where an actor sings his lines. Aristophanes uses anapaests in the form of the anapaestic tetrameter catalectic, i.e. four anapaestic metra, with the final metron in the form ⌣⌣__∧.
8. Lyric metres. These are the metres of poetry that was sung rather than chanted or recited.
i. Aeolic metres. These are the metres in which Sappho and Alcaeus wrote most of their poetry, and they are known as aeolic after the poets' homeland, Aeolis. They are also found elsewhere in lyric poetry, in Anacreon, Pindar, Bacchylides, and many of the lyrics of Greek tragedy. They are analysed not into feet or metra but into cola of various kinds; a colon is a metrical sequence of not more than about twelve syllables with a recognizable recurring pattern. Sometimes a line of poetry consists of one colon; at other times two or three cola are put together to form a line or a stanza (strophē). It is characteristic of aeolic metres that the number of syllables in a given colon is always the same; there is no resolution (_ into ⌣⌣) or contraction ⌣⌣ into _). Some cola begin with two syllables which may be either long or short (× ×), although it is rare for both to be short. This feature is known as the ‘aeolic base’. The commonest aeolic cola are: In the last two pairs of cola, the one colon differs from the other only in the exchange of middle syllables. Such an exchange within a colon or metron is known as anaclasis. It will also be seen that several cola differ from each other by having one syllable more or less at the beginning or the end. Other cola can be produced by the internal addition of _⌣⌣ or _⌣⌣_. The asclepiad, for example, is a glyconic extended by _⌣⌣_, thus: × × _⌣⌣__⌣⌣_⌣_ or even × × _⌣⌣__⌣⌣__⌣⌣_⌣_ The sapphic stanza or strophe (used by both Sappho and Alcaeus) combines aeolic cola in the following way: _⌣_ × _⌣⌣_⌣__ _⌣_ × _⌣⌣_⌣__ _⌣_ × _⌣⌣_⌣_ × _⌣⌣__ The alcaic stanza or strophe (perhaps not used by Sappho) comibines the following cola: × _⌣_ × _⌣⌣_⌣_ × _⌣_ × _⌣⌣_⌣_ × _⌣_ × _⌣_ × _⌣⌣_⌣⌣_⌣__ These two stanza forms are also familiar from the Odes of Horace (see LATIN 3 (iii) below).
ii. Simonides, Bacchylides, and Pindar. (What follows refers mainly to Pindar and Bacchylides; relatively little of Simonides survives.) The poems of these three were mostly triadic and the metres of two main kinds, aeolic and dactylo-epitrite. With a few exceptions these two metres were not mixed; a poem was written either in the one or in the other. The aeolic poems employ the cola described in (i) above but in a large variety of abbreviated, headless (‘acephalous’) and catalectic forms, and in unusual combinations, so that it is difficult to identify the cola.

The dactylo-epitrite poems are composed mainly of the sequences _⌣⌣_⌣⌣_ (the hemiepes; see 4 above) and _⌣⌣ in various combinations, these two sequences often linked by an anceps syllable, usually long. It has become customary to analyse dactylo-epitrite in the following notation: Of these, D, e, and E are very common, d1 and d2 relatively rare forms.
iii. Dochmiacs. This metre occurs in sequences in tragedy, at moments of excitement or high emotion. Although the normal dochmiac metron is described as ⌣__⌣_, it is not in fact the commonest form, which is ⌣⌣⌣_⌣_. Analysis is made difficult by the large number of possible variants.

2. Latin

1. Spoken Latin had a stress accent which classical Greek apparently did not have, yet the metres of classical Latin poetry were quantitative, as in Greek (see GREEK 1 above); on the whole, Latin poets avoided conflict between stress accent and quantity. All Latin metres were borrowed from Greek (except perhaps the saturnian metre), with adaptations to make them fit the different sound pattern of Latin or to suit the individual poet's technique.

The saturnian metre, the oldest Latin verse form, was so named by later poets to suggest its origin in a remote past (such as the Golden Age, when Saturn was king of the gods). It was the metre used by Livius Andronicus for his translation or adaptation of the Odyssey into Latin, by Naevius for his original Latin epic poem on the First Punic War, and is also found in the hymn of the arval priests. Later poets expressed repugnance for it. There is no agreement about its metrical form, except that each line fell into two parts, roughly iambic and trochaic respectively.
2. The metres of Latin drama. Livius Andronicus and Naevius, as well as writing in saturnian metre, used Greek metres in drama, but Ennius is the first Roman dramatist of whose tragedies sufficient fragments remain to show that he certainly adopted the Greek quantitative scansion. Plautus and Terence adopted a wide range of quantitative metres, and show a compromise between stress accent and quantity, the latter being frequently modified to fit the former.

The dialogue of the plays was usually written in iambic senarii (i.e. lines of six iambic feet, equivalent to iambic trimeters in Greek drama). The Latin senarius, unlike the Greek trimeter, is best analysed into feet. The various possibilities can be indicated thus: Caesura (see GREEK 2 above) usually occurs in the third foot but sometimes in the fourth; hiatus is allowed at the caesura. Porson's Law (see GREEK 5) does not apply. Although resolution is common, a sequence of four short syllables is generally avoided.

The lyric songs (cantica), common in Plautus, rare in Terence, include a variety of lyric metres.
3. Later Latin metres.
i. The (dactylic) hexameter, introduced by Ennius and perfected by Virgil and Ovid, is similar to the Greek hexameter (see GREEK 2 above). The caesura occurs most commonly after the first long syllable of the third foot, less often after the first short syllable. After Ennius, monosyllables at the end of the line became rare, although in Horace's Satires monosyllabic adverbs and particles placed in the final position impart a casual, conversational tone to the verse.
ii. The elegiac couplet or elegiacs, also introduced by Ennius, and perfected by Tibullus, Propertius, and Ovid, was based on the Greek (see GREEK 4). A monosyllable immediately before the central caesura of the pentameter was avoided unless it followed another monosyllable or a word consisting of two short syllables. Ovid normally ended the line with a disyllabic word; earlier elegists admitted a word of five syllables.
iii. Lyric metres. Latin lyric poetry is less in quantity and not generally as complex as Greek. The chief writers of Latin lyric were Catullus and Horace, but Martial also used lyric metres (hendecasyllables and choliambics; see (a) and (b) below), as did Seneca in his tragedies.

Horace used especially the sapphic and alcaic stanza forms (see GREEK 8 (i)), and combinations of asclepiads, glyconics, and pherecrateans, in all of which he bound himself by restrictions unknown in Greek.

(a) The hendecasyllable metre (having a line ‘of eleven syllables’) was originally Greek; it has the form:× × _⌣⌣_⌣_⌣__
(b) The scazon or choliambic metre, also adopted from Greek by Catullus and Martial, was a ‘limping’ iambic trimeter in which a long syllable appeared in place of the short expected in the penultimate position (see GREEK 5 (iii)).

 
Grammar Dictionary: meter

The highly organized rhythm characteristic of verse; the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line. (See iambic pentameter.)

 
Poetry Glossary: Meter or Metre

A measure of rhythmic quantity, the organized succession of groups of syllables at basically regular intervals in a line of poetry, according to definite metrical patterns. In classic Greek and Latin versification, meter depended on the way long and short syllables were arranged to succeed one another, but in English the distinction is between accented and unaccented syllables. The unit of measure is the foot. Metrical lines are named for the type of constituent foot and for the number of feet in the line: monometer (1), dimeter (2), trimeter (3), tetrameter (4), pentameter (5), hexameter (6), heptameter (7) and octameter (8); thus, a line containing five iambic feet, for example, would be called iambic pentameter. Rarely does a metrical line exceed six feet.

 
Wikipedia: meter (poetry)

Meter (British English spelling: metre) describes the linguistic sound patterns of a verse. Scansion is the analysis of poetry's metrical and rhythmic patterns. Prosody is sometimes used to describe poetic meter, and indicates the analysis of similar aspects of language in linguistics. Meter is part of many formal verse forms.

Fundamentals

See also: Systems of scansion

The units of poetic meter, like rhyme, vary from language to language and between poetic traditions. They can involve arrangements of syllables into repeated patterns called feet within a line. English meter is traditionally conceived as being founded on the patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables. In Latin verse, on the other hand, while the metrical units are similar, not syllable stresses but syllable lengths are the component parts of meter. Old English poetry used alliterative verse, a metrical pattern involving varied numbers of syllables but a fixed number of strong stresses in each line. Meters in English verse, and in the classical Western poetic tradition on which it is founded, are named by the characteristic foot and the number of feet per line. Thus, for example, blank verse is unrhymed "iambic pentameter," a meter composed of five feet per line in which the kind of feet called iambs predominate. This tradition of metrics originated from the ancient Greek poetry of Homer, Pindar, Hesiod, Sappho, and the great tragedians of Athens.

Technical terms

  • caesura: (literally, a cut or cutting) refers to a particular kind of break within a poetic line. In Latin and Greek meter, caesura refers to a break within a foot caused by the end of a word. In English poetry, a caesura refers to a sense of a break within a line. Caesurae play a particularly important role in Old English poetry.
  • Inversion: when a foot of poetry is reversed with respect to the general meter of a poem.
  • Headless: a meter where the first foot is missing its first syllable.
  • Quantitative: see Quantitative#Use in prosody and poetry

Meter in various languages

Greek and Latin

The metrical "feet" in the classical languages were based on the length of time taken to pronounce each syllable, which were categorized according to their weight as either "long" syllables or "short" syllables (also known as "heavy" and "light" syllables, respectively, to distinguish from long and short vowels). The foot is often compared to a musical measure and the long and short syllables to whole notes and half notes. In English poetry, feet are determined by emphasis rather than length, with stressed and unstressed syllables serving the same function as long and short syllables in classical meter.

The basic unit in Greek and Latin prosody is a mora, which is defined as a single short syllable. A long syllable is equivalent to two moras. A long syllable contains either a long vowel, a diphthong, or a short vowel followed by two or more consonants. Various rules of elision sometimes prevent a grammatical syllable from making a full syllable, and certain other lengthening and shortening rules (such as correption) can create long or short syllables in contexts where one would expect the opposite.

The most important Classical meter is the dactylic hexameter, the meter of Homer and Virgil. This form uses verses of six feet. The first four feet are dactyls, but can be spondees. The fifth foot is almost always a dactyl. The sixth foot is either a spondee or a trochee. The initial syllable of either foot is called the ictus, the basic "beat" of the verse. There is usually a caesura after the ictus of the third foot. The opening line of the Æneid is a typical line of dactylic hexameter:

Armă vĭ|rumquĕ că|nō, Troi|ae quī | prīmŭs ăb | ōrīs
("I sing of arms and the man, who first from the shores of Troy. . . ")

The first and second feet are dactyls; their first syllables, "Ar" and "rum" respectively, contain short vowels, but count as long because the vowels are both followed by two consonants. The third and fourth feet are spondees, the first of which is divided by the main caesura of the verse. The fifth foot is a dactyl, as is nearly always the case. The final foot is a spondee.

The dactylic hexameter was imitated in English by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his poem Evangeline:

This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of old, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.

Also important in Greek and Latin poetry is the dactylic pentameter. This was a line of verse, made up of two equal parts, each of which contains two dactyls followed by a long syllable, which counts as a half foot. In this way, the number of feet amounts to five in total. Spondees can take the place of the dactyls in the first half, but never in the second. The long syllable at the close of the first half of the verse always ends a word, giving rise to a caesura.

Dactylic pentameter is never used in isolation. Rather, a line of dactylic pentameter follows a line of dactylic hexameter in the elegiac distich or elegiac couplet, a form of verse that was used for the composition of elegies and other tragic and solemn verse in the Greek and Latin world, as well as love poetry that was sometimes light and cheerful. An example from Ovid's Tristia:

Vergĭlĭ|um vī|dī tan|tum, nĕc ă|māră Tĭ|bullō
Tempŭs ă|mīcĭtĭ|ae || fātă dĕ|dērĕ mĕ|ae.
("I only saw Vergil, greedy Fate gave Tibullus no time for me.")

The Greeks and Romans also used a number of lyric meters, which were typically used for shorter poems than elegiacs or hexameter. One important line was called the hendecasyllabic, a line of eleven syllables. This meter was used most often in the Sapphic stanza, named after the Greek poet Sappho, who wrote many of her poems in the form. A hendecasyllabic is a line with a never-varying structure: two trochees, followed by a dactyl, then two more trochees. In the Sapphic stanza, three hendecasyllabics are followed by an "Adonic" line, made up of a dactyl and a trochee. This is the form of Catullus 51 (itself an homage to Sappho 31):

Illĕ | mī pār | essĕ dĕ|ō vĭ|dētŭr;
illĕ, | sī fās | est, sŭpĕ|rārĕ | dīvōs,
quī sĕ|dēns ad|versŭs ĭ|dentĭ|dem tē
spectăt ĕt | audĭt
("He seems to me to be like a god; if it is permitted, he seems above the gods, he who sitting across from you gazes at you and listens to you.")

The Sapphic stanza was imitated in English by Algernon Charles Swinburne in a poem he simply called Sapphics:

Saw the white implacable Aphrodite,
Saw the hair unbound and the feet unsandalled
Shine as fire of sunset on western waters;
Saw the reluctant. . .

See also the list of classical meters.

English

Old English

Old English poetry has a different metrical system from modern English. In Old English poetry, each line must contain four fully stressed syllables, which often alliterate. The unstressed syllables are less important. Old English poetry is an example of the alliterative verse found in most of the older Germanic languages.

Modern English

Most English meter is classified according to the same system as Classical meter with an important difference. English is an accentual language, and therefore beats and offbeats (stressed and unstressed syllables) take the place of the long and short syllables of classical systems. In most English verse, the meter can be considered as a sort of back beat, against which natural speech rhythms vary expressively.

The most common characteristic feet of English verse are the iamb in two syllables and the anapest in three. (See Foot (prosody) for a complete list of the metrical feet and their names.)

Metrical systems

The number of metrical systems in English is not agreed.[1] The major four types[2] are: accentual verse, accentual-syllabic verse, syllabic verse and quantitative verse. The alliterative verse of Old English could also be added to this list, or included as a special type of accentual verse. Accentual verse focuses on the number of stresses in a line, while ignoring the number of offbeats and syllables; accentual-syllabic verse focuses on regulating both the number of stresses and the total number of syllables in a line; syllabic verse only counts the number of syllables in a line; quantitative verse regulates the patterns of long and short syllables, this sort of verse is often considered alien to English.[3]

It is to be noted, however, that the use of foreign metres in English is all but exceptional.[4]

Frequently-used meters

The most frequently encountered line of English verse is the iambic pentameter, in which the metrical norm is five iambic feet per line, though metrical substitution is common and rhythmic variations practically inexhaustible. John Milton's Paradise Lost, most sonnets, and much else besides in English are written in iambic pentameter. Lines of unrhymed iambic pentameter are commonly known as blank verse. Blank verse in the English language is most famously represented in the plays of William Shakespeare, although it is also notable in the work of Milton and Tennyson (e.g. Ulysses, The Princess).

A rhymed pair of lines of iambic pentameter make a heroic couplet, a verse form which was used so often in the eighteenth century that it is now used mostly for humorous effect (although see Pale Fire for a non-trivial case)[citation needed]. The most famous writers of heroic couplets are Dryden and Pope.

Another important meter in English is the ballad meter, also called the "common meter", which is a four line stanza, with two pairs of a line of iambic tetrameter followed by a line of iambic trimeter; the rhymes usually fall on the lines of trimeter, although in many instances the tetrameter also rhymes. This is the meter of most of the Border and Scots or English ballads. It is called the "common meter" in hymnody (as it is the most common of the named hymn meters used to pair lyrics with melodies) and provides the meter for a great many hymns, such as Amazing Grace:[5]

Amazing Grace! how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me;
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.

Emily Dickinson is famous for her frequent use of ballad meter:

Great streets of silence led away
To neighborhoods of pause;
Here was no notice — no dissent —
No universe — no laws.

A number of different Hymn meters are also in use.

French

In French poetry, meter is determined solely by the number of syllables in a line. A silent 'e' counts as a syllable before a consonant, but is elided before a vowel (where "h aspiré" counts as a consonant). At the end of a line, the "e" remains unelided but is hypermetrical (outside the count of syllables, like a feminine ending in English verse). The most frequently encountered meter in French is the alexandrine, composed of two hemistiches of six syllables each. Classical French poetry also had a complex set of rules for rhymes that goes beyond how words merely sound. These are usually taken into account when describing the meter of a poem.

Spanish

In Spanish poetry the meter is the determined by the number of syllables the verse has. Still it is the phonetic accent in the last word of the verse decides the final count of the line. If the accent of the final word is at the last syllable, then the poetic rule states that one syllable shall be added to the actual count of syllables in said line, thus having a higher number of poetic syllables than the number of grammatical syllables. If the accent lies on the second to last syllable of the last word in the verse, then the final count of poetic syllables will be the same as the grammatical number of syllables. Furthermore if the accent lies on the third to last syllable, then one syllables is subtracted from the actual count, having then less poetic syllables than grammatical syllables. Interestingly Spanish poetry uses poetic licenses, unique to romantic languages, to change the number of syllables by manipulating mainly the vowels in the line. For example:

Cuando salí de collores,
fue en una jaquita valla,
por un sendero entre mayas,
arropás de cundiamores...

This stanza from Valle de Collores by Luis Llorens Torres, uses eight poetic syllables. Given that all words at the end of each line have their phonetic accent on the second to last syllables, no syllables in the final count is either added or subtracted. Still in the second and third verse the grammatical count of syllables is nine. Poetic licenses permit the union of two vowels that are next to each other but in different syllables and count them as one. "Fue en..." has actually two syllables, but applying this license both vowels unite and form only one, giving the final count of eight syllables. "Sendero entre..." has five grammatical syllables, but uniting the "o" from "sendero" and the first "e" from "entre", gives only four syllables, permitting it to have eight syllables in the verse as well. This license is called a synalepha (Spanish: sinalefa). There are many types of licenses, used either to add or subtract syllables, that may be applied when needed after taking in consideration the poetic rules of the last word. Yet all have in common that they only manipulate vowels that are close to each other and not interrupted by consonants.

Some common meters in Spanish verse are:

  • Septenary: A line with the seven poetic syllables
  • Octosyllable: A line with eight poetic syllables. This meter is commonly used in romances, narrative poems similar to English ballads, and in most proverbs.
  • Hendecasyllable: A line witth eleven poetic syllables. This meter plays a similar role to pentameter in English verse. It is commonly used in sonnets, among other things.
  • Alexandrine: A line consisting of thirteen or more poetic syllables.

Italian

In Italian poetry, meter is determined solely by the position of the last accent in a line. Syllables are enumerated with respect to a verse which ends with a paroxytone, so that a Septenary (literally, 'having seven syllables') is defined as a verse whose last accent falls on the sixth syllable: it may so contain eight syllables (Ei fu. Siccome immobile) or just six (la terra al nunzio sta). Moreover, when a word ends with a vowel and the next one starts with a vowel, they are considered to be in the same syllable: so Gli anni e i giorni consists of only four syllables ("Gli an" "ni e i" "gior" "ni"). Because of the mostly trochaic nature of the Italian language, verses with an even number of syllables are far easier to compose, and the Novenary is usually regarded as the most difficult verse.

Some common meters in Italian verse are:

  • Septenary: A line whose last stressed syllable is the sixth one.
  • Octosyllable: A line whose last accent falls on the seventh syllable. More often than not, the secondary accents fall on the first, third and fifth syllable, especially in nursery rhymes for which this meter is particularly well-suited.
  • Hendecasyllable: A line whose last accent falls on the tenth syllable. It therefore usually consists of eleven syllables; there are various kinds of possible accentations. It is used in sonnets, in ottava rima, and in many other works. The Divine Comedy, in particular, is composed entirely of hendecasyllables.

Ottoman Turkish

In the Ottoman Turkish language, the structures of the poetic foot (تفعل tef'ile) and of poetic meter (وزن vezin) were indirectly borrowed from the Arabic poetic tradition through the medium of the Persian language.

Ottoman poetry, also known as Dîvân poetry, was generally written in quantitative, mora-timed meter. The moras, or syllables, are divided into three basic types:

  • Open, or light, syllables (açık hece) consist of either a short vowel alone, or a consonant followed by a short vowel
    • Examples: a-dam ("man"); zir-ve ("summit, peak")
  • Closed, or heavy, syllables (kapalı hece) consist of either a long vowel alone, a consonant followed by a long vowel, or a short vowel followed by a consonant
    • Examples: Â-dem ("Adam"); kâ-fir ("non-Muslim"); at ("horse")
  • Lengthened, or superheavy, syllables (meddli hece) count as one closed plus one open syllable and consist of a vowel followed by a consonant cluster, or a long vowel followed by a consonant
    • Examples: kürk ("fur"); âb ("water")

In writing out a poem's poetic meter, open syllables are symbolized by "." and closed syllables are symbolized by "–". From the different syllable types, a total of sixteen different types of poetic foot—the majority of which are either three or four syllables in length—are constructed, which are named and scanned as follows:

      fa‘ (–) fe ul (. –) fa‘ lün (– –) fe i lün (. . –)
      fâ i lün (– . –) fe û lün (. – –) mef’ û lü (– – .) fe i lâ tün (. . – –)
      fâ i lâ tün (– . – –) fâ i lâ tü (– . – .) me fâ i lün (. – . –) me fâ’ î lün (. – – –)
      me fâ î lü (. – – .) müf te i lün (– . . –) müs tef i lün (– – . –) mü te fâ i lün (. . – . –)


These individual poetic feet are then combined in a number of different ways, most often with four feet per line, so as to give the poetic meter for a line of verse. Some of the most commonly used meters are the following:

  • me fâ’ î lün / me fâ’ î lün / me fâ’ î lün / me fâ’ î lün
    . – – – / . – – – / . – – – / . – – –
      Ezelden şāh-ı ‘aşḳuñ bende-i fermānıyüz cānā
Maḥabbet mülkinüñ sulţān-ı ‘ālī-şānıyüz cānā		 Oh beloved, since the origin we have been the slaves of the shah of love
Oh beloved, we are the famed sultan of the heart's domain[6]


—Bâkî (1526–1600)
  • me fâ i lün / fe i lâ tün / me fâ i lün / fe i lün
    . – . – / . . – – / . – . – / . . –
      Ḥaţā’ o nerkis-i şehlādadır sözümde degil
Egerçi her süḥanim bī-bedel beġendiremem		 Though I may fail to please with my matchless verse
The fault lies in those languid eyes and not my words


—Şeyh Gâlib (1757–1799)
  • fâ i lâ tün / fâ i lâ tün / fâ i lâ tün / fâ i lün
    – . – – / – . – – / – . – – / – . –
      Bir şeker ḥand ile bezm-i şevķa cām ettiñ beni
Nīm ṣun peymāneyi sāḳī tamām ettiñ beni		 At the gathering of desire you made me a wine-cup with your sugar smile
Oh saki, give me only half a cup of wine, you've made me drunk enough[7]


—Nedîm (1681?–1730)
  • fe i lâ tün / fe i lâ tün / fe i lâ tün / fe i lün
    . . – – / . . – – / . . – – / . . –
      Men ne ḥācet ki ḳılam derd-i dilüm yāra ‘ayān
Ḳamu derd-i dilümi yār bilübdür bilübem		 What use in revealing my sickness of heart to my love
I know my love knows the whole of my sickness of heart


—Fuzûlî (1483?–1556)
  • mef’ û lü / me fâ î lü / me fâ î lü / fâ û lün
    – – . / . – – . / . – – . / – – .
      Şevḳuz ki dem-i bülbül-i şeydāda nihānuz
Ḥūnuz ki dil-i ġonçe-i ḥamrāda nihānuz		 We are desire hidden in the love-crazed call of the nightingale
We are blood hidden in the crimson heart of the unbloomed rose[8]


—Neşâtî (?–1674)

Sanskrit

Main article: Vedic meter

Classical Sanskrit and Vedic Sanskrit use meters for most ancient treatises that are set to verse. Prominent Vedic meters include Gayatri, Ushnik, Anushtubh, Brhati, Pankti, Tristubh and Jagati. The basic meter for epic verse is the Sloka. Sanskrit meter is quantitative, following the same general principles as classical Greek and Latin meter.

The Bhagavad Gita is mainly written in anustubh interspersed with some tristubh. For example, when Krishna reveals his divinity to Arjuna the meter changes to tristubh. Tristubh is the most prevalent meter of the ancient Rigveda, accounting for roughly 40% of its verses.

History

Further information: History of poetry

Although no doubt dating far into prehistoric times, metrical texts are first attested in early Indo-European languages. The earliest known unambiguously metrical texts, and at the same time the only metrical texts with a claim of dating to the Late Bronze Age, are the hymns of the Rigveda. That the texts of the Ancient Near East (Sumerian, Egyptian or Semitic) should not exhibit meter is surprising, and may be partly due to the nature of Bronze Age writing. There were, in fact, attemtps to reconstruct metrical qualities of the poetic portions of the Hebrew Bible, e.g. by Gustav Bickell[9] or Julius Ley[10], but they remained inconclusive[11] (see Biblical poetry).

Early Iron Age metrical poetry is found in the Iranian Avesta and in the Greek works attributed to Homer and Hesiod.

Latin verse survives from the Old Latin period (ca. 2nd c. BC), in the Saturnian meter. Persian poetry arises in the Sassanid era. Tamil poetry of the early centuries AD may be the earliest known non-Indo-European metrical texts (with the possible exception of the Chinese Shi Jing). The oldest surviving fragment of Germanic poetry is the verse on one of the Gallehus horns (ca. AD 400). Irish and Arabic poetry both have early records dating from about the 6th century.

Medieval poetry was metrical without exception, spanning traditions as diverse as European Minnesang, Trouvère or Bardic poetry, Classical Persian and Sanskrit poetry, Tang dynasty Chinese poetry or the Japanese Heian period Man'yōshū. Renaissance and Early Modern poetry in Europe is characterized by a return to templates of Classical Antiquity, a tradition begun by Petrarca's generation and continued into the time of Shakespeare and Milton.

Dissent

Not all poets accept the idea that meter is a fundamental part of poetry. Twentieth Century American poets Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, and Robinson Jeffers, were poets who believed that meter was imposed into poetry by man, not a fundamental part of its nature. In an essay titled "Robinson Jeffers, & The Metric Fallacy"[1], poet/critic Dan Schneider echoes Jeffers' sentiments: "What if someone actually said to you that all music was composed of just 2 notes? Or if someone claimed that there were just 2 colors in creation? Now, ponder if such a thing were true. Imagine the clunkiness & mechanicality of such music. Think of the visual arts devoid of not just color, but sepia tones, & even shades of gray." Jeffers called his technique "rolling stresses".

Moore went even further than Jeffers, openly declaring her poetry was written in syllabic form, and wholly denying meter. These syllabic lines from her famous poem "Poetry" illustrate her contempt for meter, and other poetic tools (even the syllabic pattern of this poem does not remain perfectly consistent):

nor is it valid
to discriminate against "business documents and
school-books": all these phenomena are important. One must make a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the result is not poetry

Williams tried to form poetry whose subject matter was centered on the lives of common people. He came up with the concept of the variable foot. Williams spurned traditional meter in most of his poems, preferring what he called "colloquial idioms." Another poet that turned his back on traditional concepts of meter was Britain's Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hopkins' major innovation was what he called sprung rhythm. He claimed most poetry was written in this older rhythmic structure inherited from the Norman side of the English literary heritage, based on repeating groups of two or three syllables, with the stressed syllable falling in the same place on each repetition. Sprung rhythm is structured around feet with a variable number of syllables, generally between one and four syllables per foot, with the stress always falling on the first syllable in a foot.

Notes

  1. ^ For example, Robert Wallace, in his 1993 essay 'Meter in English (essay)' asserts that there is only one meter in English: Accentual-Syllabic. The essay is reprinted in David Baker (editor), Meter in English, A Critical Engagement, University of Arkansas Press, 1996. ISBN 1-55728-444-X.
  2. ^ see for example, Paul Fussell, Poetic Meter and Poetic Form, McGraw Hill, 1965, revised 1979. ISBN 0-07-553606-4.
  3. ^ Charles O. Hartman writes that quantitative meters "continue to resist importation in English" (, Northwestern University Press, 1980. ISBN 0-8101-1316-3, page 34).
  4. ^ According to Leonardo Malcovati (Prosody in England and Elsewhere: A Comparative Approach, Gival Press, 2006. ISBN 1-928589-26-X), '[very] little of it is native'.
  5. ^ The ballad meter commonality among a wide range of song lyrics allow words and music to be interchanged seamlessly between various songs, such as Amazing Grace, the Ballad of Gilligan's Isle, House of the Rising Sun, theme from the Mickey Mouse Club, and others.
  6. ^ Andrews, Walter G. Ottoman Lyric Poetry: An Anthology. ISBN 0-292-70472-0. p. 93.
  7. ^ Ibid. p. 134.
  8. ^ Ibid. p. 131.
  9. ^ "Metrices biblicae regulae exemplis illustratae", 1879, "Carmina Vet. Test. metrice", 1882
  10. ^ "Leitfaden der Metrik der hebräischen Poesie", 1887
  11. ^ the Catholic Encyclopedia s.v. Hebrew Poetry of the Old Testament calls them 'Procrustean'.

See also

Foot (prosody)
Meter (music)


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