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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.
Dactylic hexameter (also known as heroic hexameter and the meter of epic) is a form of meter or rhythmic scheme frequently used in Ancient Greek and Latin poetry. The scheme of the hexameter is usually as follows (writing – for a long syllable, u for a short, and u u for a position that may be a long or two shorts):
Iambic pentameter is the most common meter in English poetry. It was first introduced into English by Chaucer in the 14th century on the basis of French and Italian models. It is used in several major English poetic forms, including blank verse, the heroic couplet, and some of the traditionally rhymed stanza forms.
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.
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 ...
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.
The Iambic trimeter, in classical Greek and Latin poetry, is a meter of poetry consisting of three iambic metra (each of two feet) per line. In English poetry, it refers to a meter with three iambic feet. In ancient Greek poetry and Latin poetry, an iambic trimeter is a quantitative meter, in which a line consists of three iambic metra.
An example of dactylic meter is the first line of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's epic poem Evangeline (1847), which is in dactylic hexameter: This is the / forest prim- / eval. The / murmuring / pines and the / hemlocks, The first five feet of the line are dactyls; the sixth a trochee.