Poetic Meter (Written Conventions of English)

POETIC METER (Written Conventions of English)

Meter is the "beat" in a line of poetry. Even natural speech can have meter, but here are some formal "feet" used by poets (note that ^ means a light beat and / a heavy one):

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• Iamb: ^ / "inDEED" This was Shakespeare's chosen meter; with five feet in a line it is called "iambic pentameter": "But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?"
• Trochee: / ^ "WAter"  Poe's "The Raven" begins: "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary..."
• Spondee: / / "BIRTHDAY" All but "On thy" in these lines by Tennyson are spondaic: "Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!"
• Dactyl: / ^ ^ "YESterday" Dactylic lines often end with a trochee, as in Longfellow's Evangeline: "This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks..."
• Anapest: ^ ^ / "underSTAND" Look at this familiar line: "'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house..."

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Lines are also named for the number of feet contained in them (as in "iambic pentameter" above). Some are:

1. = monometer
2. = dimeter
3. = trimeter
4. = tetrameter
5. = pentameter
6. = hexameter
7. = heptameter
8. = octameter

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