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In poetry, metre (Commonwealth spelling) or meter (American spelling; 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.
Stichic: a poem composed of lines of the same approximate meter and length, not broken into stanzas. Syllabic: a poem whose meter is determined by the total number of syllables per line, rather than the number of stresses. Tanka: a Japanese form of five lines with 5, 7, 5, 7, and 7 syllables—31 in all.
The individual rhythmical patterns used in Greek and Latin poetry are also known as "metres" (US "meters"). Greek poetry developed first, starting as early as the 8th century BC with the epic poems of Homer and didactic poems of Hesiod, which were composed in the dactylic hexameter. A variety of other metres were used for lyric poetry and for ...
Poems in hendecasyllables all run on in the same meter, namely spondee (but see below), dactyl, trochee, trochee, spondee. Catullus is rather freer than Martial, in that he will occasionally start a line with a trochee or iambus, as in lines 2 and 4 respectively of the opening poem of his book, whereas Martial keeps to a spondaic opening.
Meter is measured in small groups of syllables called feet. "Iambic" indicates that the type of foot used is the iamb, which in English is composed of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (as in a-BOVE). "Pentameter" indicates that each line has five metrical feet. Iambic pentameter is the most common meter in English poetry.
A quatrain is a type of stanza, or a complete poem, consisting of four lines. [1]Existing in a variety of forms, the quatrain appears in poems from the poetic traditions of various ancient civilizations including Persia, Ancient India, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, and China, and continues into the 21st century, [1] where it is seen in works published in many languages.
In classical Greek and Latin poetry a caesura is the juncture where one word ends and the following word begins within a foot. In contrast, a word juncture at the end of a foot is called a diaeresis. Some caesurae are expected and represent a point of articulation between two phrases or clauses.
Common metre or common measure [1] —abbreviated as C. M. or CM—is a poetic metre consisting of four lines that alternate between iambic tetrameter (four metrical feet per line) and iambic trimeter (three metrical feet per line), with each foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.