Meter (poetry)

Metre (American spelling: meter) describes the regular linguistic sound patterns of verse. Scansion is the analysis of poetry's metrical and rhythmic patterns; prosody is sometimes used to describe poetic meter, and sometimes indicates the analysis of similar aspects of language in linguistics. Meter is part of many formal verse forms.

Greek and Latin poetry

The metrical "feet" in the classical languages were based on the length of time taken to pronounce each syllable, which were categorized as either "long" syllables or "short" syllables. 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.

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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.

Related Topics:
Mora - Diphthong - Elision

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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 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:

Related Topics:
Dactylic hexameter - Spondee - Trochee - Æneid

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:{{Unicode|Árm? vír?mq?e cán??, Tr??jáe qu?? pr??m?s ?b ?ris}}

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::("I sing of arms and the man, who first from the shores of Troy. . . ")

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The first and second feet are dactyls; their vowels are grammatically short, but long in poetry because both are followed by two consonants. The third and fourth feet are spondees, with two long vowels, one on either side of the caesura. The fifth foot is a dactyl, as it must be, with the ictus this time falling on a grammatically long vowel. The final foot is a spondee with two grammatically long vowels.

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

Related Topics:
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - Evangeline

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This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,

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Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,

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Stand like Druids of old, with voices sad and prophetic,

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Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.

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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. 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.

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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. An example from Ovid's Tristia:

Related Topics:
Elegiac - Distich - Elegiac couplet - Tragic - Ovid - Tristia

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:{{Unicode|Vérg?li?m v??d?? tánt?m, néc ?m??r? T?búll??}}

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:{{Unicode|Témp?s ?m??c?t?áe f??t? d?d?r? m?áe.}}

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::("I only saw Vergil, greedy Fate gave Tibullus no time for me.")

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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 a translation of Sappho 31):

Related Topics:
Lyric - Hendecasyllabic - Sapphic stanza - Sappho - Stanza - Catullus

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Ille mi par esse deo videtur;

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/ x / x / x x / x / x

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ille, si fas est, superare divos,

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/ x / x / x x / x / x

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qui sedens adversus identidem te

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/ x x / x

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spectat et audit. . .

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::("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.")

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

Related Topics:
English - Swinburne

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Saw the white implacable Aphrodite,

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Saw the hair unbound and the feet unsandalled

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Shine as fire of sunset on western waters;

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Saw the reluctant. . .

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