Rhythm and Meter

Iambic pentameter, the most common metrical pattern in poetry written in English, alternates weak unstressed and strong stressed syllables to make a ten-syllable line (weak strong/weak strong/weak strong/weak strong/weak strong). With its resemblance to the rhythmic pattern of the English language, even a fairly strict iambic pentameter line can result in the surprisingly natural rhythm of these lines by the 19th-century English poet Christina Rossetti:

We found her hidden just behind those screens,
The mirror gave back all her loveliness.
A queen in opal or in ruby dress,
A nameless girl in freshest summer-greens,
A saint, an angel—–every canvas means
The same one meaning, neither more nor less.

(“In an Artist's Studio,” 1896)



The removal of only two syllables from each line results in the very different feel and pace of the eight-syllable tetrameter line:

Old Women in your elbow chairs,
Who now will be your fence and shield,
When wintry blasts and cutting airs
Are busy in both house and field?

(William Wordsworth, “Elegy,” 1815)



With two less syllables, the six-syllable trimeter line moves even more quickly:

The beach is hot, the fronds
of yellow dwarf palms rust,
the clouds are close as friends,
the sea has not learned rest . . .

(Derek Walcott, “Beachhead,” 1986)

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