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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 metre is surprising, and may be partly due to the nature of Bronze Age writing.
To put it more technically, such hymns have couplets with four iambic metrical feet in the first and third lines, and three in the second and fourth. If one counted all syllables, not just stressed syllables, such hymns follow what is called an 86.86 pattern, with lines of eight syllables alternating with lines of four syllables.
A metrical foot (aka poetic foot) is the basic repeating rhythmic unit that forms part of a line of verse in most Indo-European traditions of poetry.. In some metres (such as the iambic trimeter) the lines are divided into double feet, called metra (singular: metron).
Greek and Latin metre is an overall term used for the various rhythms in which Greek and Latin poems were composed. The individual rhythmical patterns used in Greek and Latin poetry are also known as "metres" (US "meters").
The metrical stresses alternate between light and heavy. [9] It is a heavily regular beat that produces something like a repeated tune in the performing voice, and is, indeed, close to song. Because of its odd number of metrical beats, iambic pentameter, as Attridge says, does not impose itself on the natural rhythm of spoken language. [10]
A verse is formally a single metrical line in a poetic composition. [1] However, verse has come to represent any grouping of lines in a poetic composition, with groupings traditionally having been referred to as stanzas. [2] Verse in the uncountable sense refers to poetry in contrast to prose. [3]
Old English metre is the conventional name given to the poetic metre in which English language poetry was composed in the Anglo-Saxon period. The best-known example of poetry composed in this verse form is Beowulf, but the vast majority of Old English poetry belongs to the same tradition.
A metrical psalter is a kind of Bible translation: a book containing a verse translation of all or part of the Book of Psalms in vernacular poetry, meant to be sung as hymns in a church. Some metrical psalters include melodies or harmonisations.