Meter is the measured pattern of rhythmic accents in a line of verse.
History of Meter
Meter, also known as metre, means the arrangement of language in measured rhythmic movements. The word comes from the Greek word metron, which means “to measure.” Meter is comprised of a particular number of syllables found in a single line of poetry, and can be grouped into sets of two or three beats, also known as feet: units of stressed, also known as accented, and unstressed syllables. Each line of poetry has a number of feet, and meter refers to that number of feet used in a poetic line. Meter can vary or be consistent throughout a poem. Rising meter contains metrical feet that move from unstressed to stressed syllables, whereas falling meter contains metrical feet that move from stressed to unstressed syllables.
Meter is also one of the crucial distinctions between poetry and prose. From a poem’s meter(s), the reader can hear the poem’s prosody, which is defined as sonic, rhythmic patterns found in a poem. Historically, famous examples include the following:
Types of Feet in Poetry
Two-Syllables
Iamb: a metrical foot containing two syllables, the first of which is unstressed and the latter of which is stressed (e.g., “today”).
Trochee: a metrical foot containing two syllables, the first of which is stressed and the second of which is unstressed (e.g., “matter”).
Spondee: a less common metrical foot in which two consecutive syllables are stressed (e.g., “A.I.”).
Three-Syllables
Anapest: a metrical foot containing three syllables, the first two of which are unstressed and the last of which is stressed (e.g., “unaware”).
Dactyl: a metrical foot containing three syllables, the first stressed and the following two unstressed (e.g., “Waverly”).
Types of Meter in Poetry
The length of poetic meter is described using Greek suffixes:
Monometer – one foot, one beat per line
Dimeter – two feet, two beats per line
Trimeter – three feet, three beats per line
Tetrameter – four feet, four beats per line
Pentameter – five feet, five beats per line
Hexameter – six feet, six beats per line
Heptameter – seven feet, seven beats per line
Octameter – eight feet, eight beats per line
Examples of Meter in Poetry
Prevalent in poetic movements from Formalism to the Victorian Era, meter has been widely used in poetry. Iambic meter in poetry can be traced to the works of Geoffrey Chaucer in the fourteenth century. Iambic meter mimics the English language and is commonly used for employing meter. One famous example of iambic meter is Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death (479):”
Because I could not stop for Death— [iambic tetrameter]
He kindly stopped for me—… [iambic tetrameter]
Lewis Carroll uses iambic tetrameter in his poem “Jabberwocky.” Another well-known use of meter is the iambic pentameter found in Shakespearean sonnets. One noted example by William Shakespeare is “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? (Sonnet 18):”
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines…
Other examples of iambic meter in poetry include “Paradise Lost, Book VI, Lines 801–866” by John Milton, “Essay on Man, Epistle I [excerpt]” by Alexander Pope, “[I wandered lonely as a Cloud]” by William Wordsworth, “The Face of All the World (Sonnet 7)” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, as well as works by T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, Alice Oswald, and Wallace Stevens.
Examples of poetic works having trochaic meter include the works of William Blake, and W. B. Yeats, and poems such as “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe, and “Sorrow” by Edna St. Vincent Millay.