Metre (poetry)
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In poetry, metre (Commonwealth English) or meter (American English; see spelling differences) is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set of metres alternating in a particular order. The study and the actual use of metres and forms of versification are both known as prosody. (Within linguistics, "prosody" is used in a more general sense that includes not only poetic metre but also the rhythmic aspects of prose, whether formal or informal, that vary from language to language, and sometimes between poetic traditions.)
Characteristics[edit]
An assortment of features can be identified when classifying poetry and its metre.
Qualitative versus quantitative metre
The metre of most poetry of the Western world and elsewhere is based on patterns of syllables of particular types. The familiar type of metre in English-language poetry is called qualitative metre, with stressed syllables coming at regular intervals (e.g. in iambic pentameters, usually every even-numbered syllable). Many Romance languages use a scheme that is somewhat similar but where the position of only one particular stressed syllable (e.g. the last) needs to be fixed. The metre of the old Germanic poetry of languages such as Old Norse and Old English was radically different, but was still based on stress patterns.
Some classical languages, in contrast, used a different scheme known as quantitative metre, where patterns were based on syllable weight rather than stress. In the dactylic hexameters of Classical Latin and Classical Greek, for example, each of the six feet making up the line was either a dactyl (long-short-short) or a spondee (long-long): a "long syllable" was literally one that took longer to pronounce than a short syllable: specifically, a syllable consisting of a long vowel or diphthong or followed by two consonants. The stress pattern of the words made no difference to the metre. A number of other ancient languages also used quantitative metre, such as Sanskrit and Classical Arabic (but not Biblical Hebrew).
Finally, non-stressed languages that have little or no differentiation of syllable length, such as French or Chinese, base their verses on the number of syllables only. The most common form in French is the Alexandrine, with twelve syllables a verse, and in classical Chinese five characters, and thus five syllables. But since each Chinese character is pronounced using one syllable in a certain tone, classical Chinese poetry also had more strictly defined rules, such as parallelism or antithesis between lines.
Feet
In many Western classical poetic traditions, the metre of a verse can be described as a sequence of feet,[1] each foot being a specific sequence of syllable types — such as relatively unstressed/stressed (the norm for English poetry) or long/short (as in most classical Latin and Greek poetry).
Iambic pentameter, a common metre in English poetry, is based on a sequence of five iambic feet or iambs, each consisting of a relatively unstressed syllable (here represented with "×" above the syllable) followed by a relatively stressed one (here represented with "/" above the syllable) — "da-DUM" = "× /" :
× / × / × / × / × / So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, × / × / × / × / × / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
This approach to analyzing and classifying metres originates from Ancient Greek tragedians and poets such as Homer, Pindar, Hesiod, and Sappho.
However some metres have an overall rhythmic pattern to the line that cannot easily be described using feet. This occurs in Sanskrit poetry; see Vedic metre and Sanskrit metre. (Although this poetry is in fact specified using feet, each "foot" is more or less equivalent to an entire line.) It also occurs in some Western metres, such as the hendecasyllablefavoured by Catullus and Martial, which can be described as:
x x — ∪ ∪ — ∪ — ∪ — —
(where "—" = long, "∪" = short, and "x x" can be realized as "— ∪" or "— —" or "∪ —")
Classification
| Foot type | Style | Stress pattern | Syllable count |
|---|---|---|---|
| Iamb | Iambic | Unstressed + Stressed | Two |
| Trochee | Trochaic | Stressed + Unstressed | Two |
| Spondee | Spondaic | Stressed + Stressed | Two |
| Anapest or anapaest | Anapestic | Unstressed + Unstressed + Stressed | Three |
| Dactyl | Dactylic | Stressed + Unstressed + Unstressed | Three |
| Amphibrach | Amphibrachic | Unstressed + Stressed + Unstressed | Three |
| Pyrrhic | Pyrrhic | Unstressed + Unstressed | Two |
If the line has only one foot, it is called a monometer; two feet, dimeter; three is trimeter; four is tetrameter; five is pentameter; six is hexameter, seven is heptameter and eight is octameter. For example, if the feet are iambs, and if there are five feet to a line, then it is called a iambic pentameter.[1] If the feet are primarily dactyls and there are six to a line, then it is a dactylic hexameter.[1]
Caesura
Sometimes a natural pause occurs in the middle of a line rather than at a line-break. This is a caesura (cut). A good example is from The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare; the caesurae are indicated by '/':
In Latin and Greek poetry, a caesura is a break within a foot caused by the end of a word.
Each line of traditional Germanic alliterative verse is divided into two half-lines by a caesura. This can be seen in Piers Plowman:
Enjambment
By contrast with caesura, enjambment is incomplete syntax at the end of a line; the meaning runs over from one poetic line to the next, without terminal punctuation. Also from Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale:
Metric variations
Poems with a well-defined overall metric pattern often have a few lines that violate that pattern. A common variation is the inversion of a foot, which turns an iamb ("da-DUM") into a trochee ("DUM-da"). A second variation is a headless verse, which lacks the first syllable of the first foot. A third variation is catalexis, where the end of a line is shortened by a foot, or two or part thereof - an example of this is at the end of each verse in Keats' 'La Belle Dame sans Merci':
Old English
The metric system of Old English poetry was different from that of modern English, and related more to the verse forms of most of the older Germanic languages such as Old Norse. It used alliterative verse, a metrical pattern involving varied numbers of syllables but a fixed number (usually four) of strong stresses in each line. The unstressed syllables were relatively unimportant, but the caesurae (breaks between the half-lines) played a major role in Old English poetry.[7]
In place of using feet, alliterative verse divided each line into two half-lines. Each half-line had to follow one of five or so patterns, each of which defined a sequence of stressed and unstressed syllables, typically with two stressed syllables per half line. Unlike typical Western poetry, however, the number of unstressed syllables could vary somewhat. For example, the common pattern "DUM-da-DUM-da" could allow between one and five unstressed syllables between the two stresses.
The following is a famous example, taken from The Battle of Maldon, a poem written shortly after the date of that battle (AD 991):
Hige sceal þe heardra, || heorte þe cēnre,
mōd sceal þe māre, || swā ūre mægen lȳtlað
("Will must be the harder, courage the bolder,
spirit must be the more, as our might lessens.")
mōd sceal þe māre, || swā ūre mægen lȳtlað
("Will must be the harder, courage the bolder,
spirit must be the more, as our might lessens.")
In the quoted section, the stressed syllables have been underlined. (Normally, the stressed syllable must be long if followed by another syllable in a word. However, by a rule known as syllable resolution, two short syllables in a single word are considered equal to a single long syllable. Hence, sometimes two syllables have been underlined, as in hige and mægen.) The German philologist Eduard Sievers (died 1932) identified five different patterns of half-line in Anglo-Saxon alliterative poetry. The first three half-lines have the type Apattern "DUM-da-(da-)DUM-da", while the last one has the type C pattern "da-(da-da-)DUM-DUM-da", with parentheses indicating optional unstressed syllables that have been inserted. Note also the pervasive pattern of alliteration, where the first and/or second stressed syllables alliterate with the third, but not with the fourth.
Modern English[edit]
Most English metre is classified according to the same system as Classical metre 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 metre 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 upon.[8] The four major types[9] are: accentual verse, accentual-syllabic verse, syllabic verse and quantitative verse.[10] 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).[11] It is to be noted, however, that the use of foreign metres in English is all but exceptional.[12]
Frequently used metres
The most frequently encountered metre 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.[13] Blank verse in the English language is most famously represented in the plays of William Shakespeare and the great works of Milton, though Tennyson (Ulysses, The Princess) and Wordsworth (The Prelude) also make notable use of it.
A rhymed pair of lines of iambic pentameter make a heroic couplet,[14] a verse form which was used so often in the 18th century that it is now used mostly for humorous effect (although see Pale Fire for a non-trivial case). The most famous writers of heroic couplets are Dryden and Pope.
Another important metre in English is the ballad metre, also called the "common metre", 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 metre of most of the Border and Scots or English ballads. In hymnody it is called the "common metre", as it is the most common of the named hymn metres used to pair many hymn lyrics with melodies, such as Amazing Grace:[15]
Emily Dickinson is famous for her frequent use of ballad metre:
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