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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.
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.
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):
An example of scansion over a quote from Alexander Pope. Scansion (/ ˈ s k æ n. ʃ ə n / SKAN-shən, rhymes with mansion; verb: to scan), or a system of scansion, is the method or practice of determining and (usually) graphically representing the metrical pattern of a line of verse.
Hexameter is a metrical line of verses consisting of six feet (a "foot" here is the pulse, or major accent, of words in an English line of poetry; in Greek as well as in Latin a "foot" is not an accent, but describes various combinations of syllables).
Meter is the definitive pattern established for a verse (such as iambic pentameter), while rhythm is the actual sound that results from a line of poetry. Prosody also may be used more specifically to refer to the scanning of poetic lines to show meter.
The foot is the basic repeating rhythmic unit that forms part of a line of verse in most Indo-European traditions of poetry, including English accentual-syllabic verse and the quantitative meter of classical ancient Greek and Latin poetry. The unit is composed of syllables, and is usually two, three, or four syllables in length.
A hymn metre (US: meter) indicates the number of syllables for the lines in each stanza (verse) of a hymn. This provides a means of marrying the hymn's text with an appropriate hymn tune for singing.