Rhythm and Meter in the English Poetry

Types of meter and the line length: .

Monometer One Foot

Dimeter Two Feet

Trimeter Three Feet

Tetrameter Four Feet

Pentameter Five Feet

Hexameter Six Feet

Heptameter Seven Feet

Octameter Eight Feet

There are six types of feet:

Iamb (Iambic) Unstressed + Stressed Two Syllables

Trochee (Trochaic) Stressed + Unstressed Two Syllables

Spondee (Spondaic) Stressed + Stressed Two Syllables

Anapest (Anapestic) Unstressed + Unstressed + Stressed Three Syllables

Dactyl (Dactylic) Stressed + Unstressed + Unstressed Three Syllables

Pyrrhic Unstressed + Unstressed Two Syllables

Examples from Poems

Following are additional examples feet and meter combinations.

.................. By NIGHT../..or DAY,

Iambic Dimeter

And the SOUND/ of a VOICE / that is STILL Anapestic Trimeter

Try identifying the meter in the following verses

1. / ˘ | / ˘ | / ˘ | / ˘ Peter, Peter, pumpkin-eater = trochaic tetrameter

2. But our love it was stronger by far than the love =_________________

3. Double, double, toil and trouble = _________________________

4. And we marked not the night of the year =_______________________

5. Picture yourself in a boat on a river with =__________________________

6. Tyger! Tyger! Burning brightly :_____________________________________

7. There stood a hill not far, whose grisly top:___________________________

8. Take her up tenderly:_______________________________________

9. Bats are careful; bats use radar:________________________________________

10. You know that it would be untrue: _____________________________________

11. You know that I would be a liar:_______________________________________

12. All I could see from where I stood:______________________________

13. I am lord of the fowl and the brute:_______________________________

14. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways :______________________________

15. The curfew tolls the knell of parting day :________________________________

16. Because I could not stop for Death- :_______________________________________________

17. He kindly stopped for me- :_____________________________________________

18. The Carriage held but just Ourselves- :_________________________________

19. And Immortality:________________________________________________________

Write the rhyme scheme for the following poem

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!---An ecstasy of fumbling,

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime...

Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues---

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.