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Iambic pentameter (/ aɪ ˌ æ m b ɪ k p ɛ n ˈ t æ m ɪ t ər / eye-AM-bik pen-TAM-it-ər) is a type of metric line used in traditional English poetry and verse drama. The term describes the rhythm, or meter , established by the words in each line.
Related to iambic heptameter is the more common ballad verse (also called common metre), in which a line of iambic tetrameter is succeeded by a line of iambic trimeter, usually in quatrain form. Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a classic example of this form. The reverse of an iamb is called a trochee.
Blank verse is poetry written with regular metrical but unrhymed lines, usually in iambic pentameter. It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the 16th century", [1] and Paul Fussell has estimated that "about three quarters of all English poetry is in blank verse". [2]
Iambic tetrameter is a poetic meter in ancient Greek and Latin poetry; as the name of a rhythm, iambic tetrameter consists of four metra, each metron being of the form | x – u – |, consisting of a spondee and an iamb, or two iambs. There usually is a break in the centre of the line, thus the whole line is:
Poems often arrange their lines in patterns of masculine and feminine endings, for instance in "A Psalm of Life", cited above, every couplet consists of a feminine ending followed by a masculine one. This is the pattern followed by the hymns that are classified as "87.87" in standard nomenclature (for this system see Meter (hymn) ); an example ...
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 ...
Heroic couplet: written in iambic pentameter. Poulter's measure: couplets in which a 12-syllable iambic line rhymes with a 14-syllable iambic line. [1] Envoi (or envoy): the brief stanza that ends French poetic forms such as the ballade or sestina. Ghazal; Octave: an 8-line stanza or poem.
A heroic couplet is a traditional form for English poetry, commonly used in epic and narrative poetry, and consisting of a rhyming pair of lines in iambic pentameter.Use of the heroic couplet was pioneered by Geoffrey Chaucer in the Legend of Good Women and the Canterbury Tales, [1] and generally considered to have been perfected by John Dryden and Alexander Pope in the Restoration Age and ...