26 Mar Inwrite

A Crash Course on Poetic Meter


The art of poetry is something that’s quite difficult to master. It involves stringing together words to make them sound fluid and almost musical. There’s a trick to why poems flow so well, why Shakespeare sounds so articulate, and why raps have such moving beats. The secret is meter.

Poetic meter, or meter for short, is a unit of poetry that dictates its rhythmic structure. It’s what makes poetry sound a certain way. Meter also dictates which syllables or sounds are supposed to be stressed so that the writer’s desired effect could be achieved. There are many kinds of meter, which sometimes depends on the language.

A meter, which is a line or verse in poetry, is made of several units called “feet.” Each foot contains two to three syllables. Meters may either be qualitative or quantitative. If it’s qualitative, the stressed syllables are found in regular intervals. Quantitative is a lot more difficult to explain, because it’s not measured in where the stress is found but rather on where long and short syllables are placed.

In English, there are the five common meters used.

  1. Iambic

    The iambic meter contains two syllables per foot, which follows the unstressed/stressed pattern. An example is Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18”:

    Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

    Thou art more lovely and more temperate


  1. Trochaic

    The trochaic meter contains two syllables per foot, which follows the stressed/unstressed pattern. You might have encountered it in some nursery rhymes, as it is a simple pattern:

    Little Miss Muffet, sat on a tuffet

    Eating her curds and whey


  1. Spondaic

    The spondaic meter contains two syllables per foot, wherein both syllables are stressed. Spondees are often placed with other meters for emphasis.


  1. Anapestic

    The anapestic meter contains three syllables per foot, which follows an unstressed/unstressed/stressed pattern. Anapests are used more in poetry that tells stories, as it creates long lines and allows for more complex ideas. The next time you read Clement Clarke Moore’s “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” try to be mindful of where you stress the words.

    ’Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro’ the house

    Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;


  1. Dactylic

    The dactylic meter contains three syllables per foot, which follows a stressed/unstressed/unstressed pattern. This meter is popular in Latin and Greek poetry. Some researchers also claim that most hip-hop and rap music follows this meter. An example of dactylic meter is Robert Browning’s “The Lost Leader”:

    Just for a handful of silver he left us

    Just for a riband to stick in his coat

Now that you have an idea of meter, we move on to how lines are named. Repetitions may be called any of the following: monometer (one foot per line), dimeter (two feet per line), trimeter (three feet), tetrameter (four feet), pentameter (five feet), or hexameter (six feet). If you’re familiar with Shakespeare, you may have heard of something called the iambic pentameter, which is how Shakespeare formats sonnets. This basically means that each line contains five iambs, for a total of ten syllables with alternating stresses (unstressed/stressed). Some popular combinations found in English poetry are the following:

  1. Iambic pentameter

    Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

    And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:

    —“Sonnet 18,” William Shakespeare


  1. Trochaic tetrameter

    Peter, Peter pumpkin-eater

    Had a wife and couldn’t keep her.

    —A nursery rhyme


  1. Anapestic trimeter

    There once was a man from Nantucket

    Who kept all his cash in a bucket.

    —A popular Limerick


  1. Dactylic hexameter

    Now had the season returned, when the nights grow colder and longer,

    And the retreating sun the sign of the Scorpion enters.

    —“Evangeline,” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

However, these measurements are not set in stone; they are only the ones most popularly used. Other writers drop dactyls in pentameters or insert spondees at the beginning for added emphasis. It’s all up to the writer creating the rhythm.

So why does this matter? Meter is essentially the backbone of traditional poetry. Even though free-verse poetry is all the rage these days, it’s important to understand how poetry was originally written. This gives us a better understanding of how the first poets wrote and what their intentions were in creating their poetry. Moreover, learning meter will help you write in more traditional forms of poetry, such as epics, sonnets, and ballads.

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