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In poetry, a trimeter (Greek for "three measure") is a metre of three metrical feet per line. [1] Examples:
A tercet is composed of three lines of poetry, forming a stanza or a complete poem.
In languages with quantitative poetic metres, such as Ancient Greek, Latin, Arabic, Sanskrit, and classical Persian, an anceps is a position in a metrical pattern which can be filled by either a long or a short syllable.
An anapaest is a metrical foot used in formal poetry. In classical quantitative meters it consists of two short syllables followed by a long one; in accentual stress meters it consists of two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable. It may be seen as a reversed dactyl. This word comes from the Greek ἀνάπαιστος, anápaistos, literally "struck back" and in a poetic context "a dactyl reversed".
An iamb or iambus is a metrical foot used in various types of poetry. Originally the term referred to one of the feet of the quantitative meter of classical Greek prosody: a short syllable followed by a long syllable. This terminology was adopted in the description of accentual-syllabic verse in English, where it refers to a foot comprising an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Thus a Latin word like íbī, because of its short-long rhythm, is considered by Latin scholars to be an iamb, but because it has a stress on the first syllable, in modern linguistics it is considered to be a trochee.
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. The most common feet in English are the iamb, trochee, dactyl, and anapest. The foot might be compared to a bar, or a beat divided into pulse groups, in musical notation.
Choliambic verse, also known as limping iambs or scazons or halting iambic, is a form of meter in poetry. It is found in both Greek and Latin poetry in the classical period. Choliambic verse is sometimes called scazon, or "lame iambic", because it brings the reader down on the wrong "foot" by reversing the stresses of the last few beats. It was originally pioneered by the Greek lyric poet Hipponax, who wrote "lame trochaics" as well as "lame iambics".
Common metre or common measure—abbreviated as C. M. or CM—is a poetic metre consisting of four lines that alternate between iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, with each foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. The metre is denoted by the syllable count of each line, i.e. 8.6.8.6, 86.86, or 86 86, depending on style, or by its shorthand abbreviation "CM".
Tail rhyme is a family of stanzaic verse forms used in poetry in French and especially English during and since the Middle Ages, and probably derived from models in medieval Latin versification.
The Iambic trimeter is a meter of poetry consisting of three iambic units per line.
"The Garden of Love" is a poem by the Romantic poet William Blake. It was published as part of his collection, Songs of Experience.
Biceps is a point in a metrical pattern where a pair of short syllables can freely be replaced by a long one. In Greek and Latin poetry, it is found in the dactylic hexameter and the first half of a dactylic pentameter, and also in anapaestic metres.
Synizesis is a sound change (metaplasm) in which two originally syllabic vowels (hiatus) are pronounced instead as a single syllable. In poetry, the vowel contraction would often be necessitated by the metrical requirements of the poetic form. Synizesis is also understood to occur as a natural product in the evolution of a language over time.
Poetry made up of lines of the same approximate meter and length, not broken up into stanzas, is called stichic. Most poetry from the Old English period is considered stichic. Most English poetry written in blank verse, such as the epic Paradise Lost by John Milton, is stichic. A more contemporary example is Joanna Baillie's "Hay making"1979 Greek epic, in dactylic hexameter, is stichic poetry, as is Latin epic whether in hexameter or Saturnian. Poetic dramatic dialogue, whether in English iambic pentameter or Greek iambic trimeter, also tends to be stichic in nature.
Basīṭ, or al-basīṭ (البسيط), is a metre used in classical Arabic poetry. The word literally means "extended" or "spread out" in Arabic. Along with the ṭawīl, kāmil, and wāfir, it is one of the four most common metres used in pre-Islamic and classical Arabic poetry.
"Home Thoughts, from Abroad" is a poem by Robert Browning. It was written in 1845 while Browning was on a visit to northern Italy, and was first published in his Dramatic Romances and Lyrics. It is considered an exemplary work of Romantic literature for its evocation of a sense of longing and sentimental references to natural beauty.
Triadic-line poetry or stepped line is a long line which "unfolds into three descending and indented parts". Created by William Carlos Williams, it was his "solution to the problem of modern verse" and later was also taken up by poets Charles Tomlinson and Thom Gunn.
Rajaz is a metre used in classical Arabic poetry. A poem composed in this metre is an urjūza. The metre accounts for about 3% of surviving ancient and classical Arabic verse.
Sulpicia was an ancient Roman poet who was active during the reign of the emperor Domitian. She is mostly known through two poems of Martial; she is also mentioned by Ausonius, Sidonius Apollinaris, and Fulgentius. A seventy-line hexameter poem and two lines of iambic trimeter attributed to Sulpicia survive; the hexameters are now generally thought to have been a fourth- or fifth-century imitation of Sulpicia. Judging by the ancient references to her and the single surviving couplet of her poetry, Sulpicia wrote love poetry discussing her desire for her husband, and was known for her frank sexuality.
The Madīd metre is one of the metres used in classical Arabic poetry. The theoretical pattern of the metre is as follows, where u = a short syllable, – a long syllable, and x = anceps :
Hymn meter, in Western liturgy and literature, is the general metrical scheme in which hymns are recited or sung. Three metrical schemes are generally recognized, all (usually) in four-line stanzas rhyming a-b-c-b.
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