Rhythm and Meter

RhythmRhythm refers to the regular recurrence of the accent or stress in poem or song. Consider languages and music

Nursery RhymesHumpty Dumpty sat on a wall,Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.All the king's horses and all the king's menCouldn't put Humpty together again.

Jack and Jill went up the hillto fetch a pail of waterJack fell down and broke his crownand Jill came tumbling after

Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll

John Donnes The Sun RisingPoets rely heavily on rhythm to express meaning and convey feeling.

Busy old fool, unru ly sun

Why dost thou thus

Through windows, and through curtains, call on us?Four feet with two syllables per foot = tetrameter.Five feet with two syllables per foot = pentameter*An example of an uncommon metrical foot: pyrrhic = unaccented, unaccented. If rhythm is the pulse or beat we hear in the line, then we can define meter as the measure or patterned count of a poetic line.Meter is a count of the stresses we feel in the poems rhythm.By convention the unit of poetic meter in English is the foot, a unit of measure consisting of stressed and unstressed syllables.

A poetic foot may be either iambic, trochaic, anapestic, or dactylic.Duple meters: two syllables per foot.Triple meters: three syllables per foot.iambic (iamb)an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, a pattern which comes closest to approximating the natural rhythm of speech.The first line of Christopher Marlowes pastoral, The Passionate Shepherd to His Love:

Come live with me and be my loveThis line of poetry is iambic tetrameter. Each foot has two syllables (unaccented followed by accented). Four feet = tetrameter. Remember, find the accents/stresses before marking the feet. Trochaic (trochee)a stressed followed by an unstressed syllable, as in the first line of Blake's "Introduction" to Songs of Innocence:

Piping down the valleys wildanapestic (anapest)two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable, as in the opening to Byron's "The Destruction of Sennacherib":

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the folddactylic (dactyl)a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables, as in Thomas Hardy's "The Voice":

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to mespondee and pyrrhic Two accented syllables together is called spondee (knick-knack)Two unaccented syllables together is called pyrrhic (light of the world)Both spondaic and pyrrhic feet serve as substitute feet for iambic and trochaic feet.Neither can serve as the metrical norm of an English poem.FeetThe woods are lovely dark and deep.

That time of year thou mayst in me behold,tetrameterpentameter

Shakespeare uses iambic pentameter almost exclusively in his plays.A Poem to RememberIf you have trouble remembering which type of foot is called what, memorize the following poem, "Metrical Feet." This little ditty by Samuel Coleridge is a mnemonic that illustrates each type of foot and identifies it by name.Trochee trips from long to short From long to long in solemn sort Slow spondee stalks; strong foot yet ill able Ever to run with the dactyl trisyllable. Iambics march from short to long. With a leap and a bound the swift anapests throng.Rhythm and Meter WorkTake the rest of the class to complete the scansion sheet of various stanzas of poems. Read them out loud and tap them aloud.You may work in groups, but make sure you turn in your own work at the end of class.