Structure and meter in poetry

Iambic pentameter is one of the most common metrical patterns for poetry written in English. It has ten syllables per line, or five iambic feet. You'll find this meter in most of Shakespeare's sonnets. You may also recognize it from the introduction to the Star Trek television series: To bold | ly go | where no | one's gone | before. Read these lines from Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 aloud, if possible, and notice the da-DUM pattern.You'll want to exaggerate the stressed syllables. Then read the lines again in a more normal delivery. 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, Now read Sonnet 18. This sonnet is an example of a poem that celebrates the immortality of art. In the final couplet of the sonnet, "this" refers to the poem itself. As long as people are alive and can read, this poem will transcend the decay of aging. By extension, "thee" (the person to whom the poem is addressed) will live forever, as a poem, and will not be subject to mortal decline.

Sonnet 18 by William ShakespeareShall 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 dimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines,By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;But thy eternal summer shall not fadeNor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st; So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,So long lives this, and this gives life to thee

Consonance:

The repetition of consonant sounds within words in a sentence. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers

Alliteration:

The repetition of the initial sounds in words in a sentence. Notice the other forms of repetition included in these lines. Three grey geese in a green field grazing,Grey were the geese and green was the grazing.

Assonance:

The repetition of vowel sounds in a sentence. As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives

Rhyme Sceme ABCB

The rhyme scheme abcb is found in this stanza from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The second and fourth lines of each stanza rhyme. This rhyme scheme is common in ballads. The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone: He cannot choose but hear; And thus spake on that ancient man, The bright-eyed Mariner.

Select the correct text in the passage. Which pair of lines from T. S. Elliot's "Rhapsody on a Windy Night" is an example of onomatopoeia? Twelve o'clock. Along the reaches of the street Held in a lunar synthesis, Whispering lunar incantations Dissolve the floors of memory And all its clear relations,Its divisions and precisions, Every street lamp that I pass Beats like a fatalistic drum, And through the spaces of the dark Midnight shakes the memory As a madman shakes a dead geranium. Half-past one, The street lamp sputtered, The street lamp muttered, The street lamp said, "Regard that woman Who hesitates toward you in the light of the door Which opens on her like a grin. You see the border of her dress Is torn and stained with sand, And you see the corner of her eye Twists like a crooked pin."

The street lamp sputtered, The street lamp muttered,

Onomatopoeia: Consonance: The repetition of consonant sounds within words in a sentence is consonance. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers Alliteration: The repetition of the initial sounds in words in a sentence is alliteration. Notice the other forms of repetition included in these lines. Three grey geese in a green field grazing,Grey were the geese and green was the grazing.

The use of words that imitate the sounds they describe. Baa, baa, black sheep have you any wool?

Rhyme Sceme AABB

This stanza from Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Recuerdo" has an aabbrhyme scheme. Every two lines rhyme. We were very tired, we were very merry— We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry. It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable— But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,

Identify the two words that eye rhyme in this excerpt from "The Brigs of Ayr" by Robert Burns. The simple Bard, rough at the rustic plough, Learning his tuneful trade from ev'ry bough; The chanting linnet, or the mellow thrush, Hailing the setting sun, sweet, in the green thorn bush; The soaring lark, the perching red-breast shrill, Or deep-ton'd plovers grey, wild-whistling o'er the hill Shall he-nurst in the peasant's lowly shed, To hardy independence bravely bred, By early poverty to hardship steel'd.

Thrush, Bush

Eye rhyme

Words with similar spellings but different sounds are eye rhyme. The words are pronounced differently so they only rhyme visually. In the lane named Slaughter Sinister sounds of laughter

Select the correct answer from each drop-down menu. Use context clues to identify synonyms of the bolded words from Paul Laurence Dunbar's "The Sparrow." A little bird, with plumage brown, Beside my window flutters down, But we, in traffic's rush and din Too deep engaged to let them in, The poet is describing the brown plumage of the bird. Another word for plumage is ________. When he speaks of traffic's din he means _______.

feathers, loud continued noise

Let's look at how meter, other sound devices, and stanza structure contribute to the idea of art imparting immortality. To understand the poem, you need to know that, of the 154 sonnets that Shakespeare wrote, the first 126 address a male friend whose identity is not known. (The rest are addressed to a so-called Dark Lady.) Controversy still prevails in Shakespearean studies about what this means in the poet's personal life, and more importantly, whether the reader is meant to think of the recipient of these poems as the speaker's love or friend. You'll notice that the statements about "thee" in this poem are neutral enough to be interpreted either way. As the table shows, the first line of the poem proposes comparing "thee" to a summer's day, which is assumed to be a very pleasant thing. Lines 2-12 are structured to make this comparison. Like many sonnets, this one has an octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines), which includes a final couplet (two lines). The octave proposes the comparison, praises "thee," and has six lines outlining the limits of a summer day. The next four lines describe the superiority of "thee" to the limited summer day.

line claims about "thee" and summer 2 thee: more lovely, more temperate (balanced) 3 summer: rough winds shake flowers 4 summer: soon over 5 summer: too hot from sun 6 summer: too cloudy 7-8 summer: beauty fades (from bad luck or plan) 9 thee: youth will not fade 10 thee: beauty will persist 11. thee: death won't reach you 12. thee: poem will keep you alive

The rest of the sestet, a couplet, reinforces this claim: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. The stanza structure of this sonnet propels the meaning, while meter and other sound devices make it musical. One way to hear the musicality is to read a restatement of the content of the poem in prose form. Read this version of the first eight lines: I want to compare you to a beautiful summer day, but you are more beautiful and more restrained. Strong winds disturb summer flowers, and summer doesn't last for long. Sometimes the sun shines too brightly, and sometimes the sun is covered with clouds.The beauty of every beautiful object decreases with time or change in nature.

line claims about "thee" and summer 2 thee: more lovely, more temperate (balanced) 3 summer: rough winds shake flowers 4 summer: soon over 5 summer: too hot from sun 6 summer: too cloudy 7-8 summer: beauty fades (from bad luck or plan) 9 thee: youth will not fade 10 thee: beauty will persist 11. thee: death won't reach you 12. thee: poem will keep you alive

Drag the tiles to the boxes to form correct pairs. Match each sound device to the excerpt in which it is used. Alliteration, Onomatopoeia, Assonance 1. Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night!Nearer he came and nearer. Her face was like a light.Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,(Alfred Noyes, "The Highwayman") 2. I wandered lonely as a cloudThat floats on high o'er vales and hills,When all at once I saw a crowd,A host, of golden daffodils;Beside the lake, beneath the trees,Fluttering and dancing in the breeze...(William Wordsworth, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud") 3. The breezes blew, the white foam flew,The furrow follow'd free:We were the first that ever burstInto that silent Sea.(Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner")

1. Onomatopoeia 2.Assonance 3.Alliteration

Quatrain

A quatrain is a stanza of four lines that typically has one of these rhyme schemes: aaaa, aabb, abab. Notice the abab rhyme scheme in this quatrain from "The Sun Used to Shine" by Edward Thomas: When the tide covers it late or soon, a And other men through other flowers. b In those fields under the same moon. a Go talking and have easy hours. b An exception to the quatrain rhyme scheme is the ballad, a type of narrative poem written in quatrains. In a ballad, only the second and fourth lines of each stanza must rhyme. This quatrain from "A Red, Red Rose" by Robert Burns has a ballad form: O my luve is like a red, red rose, a That's newly sprung in June: b O my luve is like the melody c That's sweetly played in tune. b

Rhyme Scheme

A rhyme scheme indicates which lines in a poem rhyme. To find a poem's line scheme, mark each line in a poem with letters. The lines that have the same rhyme get the same letter. Look at the rhyme scheme of William Wordsworth's "My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold": My heart leaps up when I behold a A rainbow in the sky: b So was it when my life began; c So is it now I am a man; c So be it when I shall grow old a Or let me die! b The Child is father of the Man; c And I could wish my days to be d Bound each to each by natural piety. d This poem has an unusual pattern. The first three lines all end in a different sound, so they're marked with different letters:abc. The rhyme in the lines that follow completes the pattern: abccabcdd.

Sestet

A sestet is a six-line stanza with variable rhyme schemes, such as the abbcac rhyme scheme in this excerpt from William Wordsworth's "London, 1802": Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart; a Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea: b Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, b So didst thou travel on life's common way, c In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart a The lowliest duties on herself did lay. c

Couplet

A stanza that has two lines with end rhymes (rhyme scheme aa) is a couplet: But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, a All losses are restor'd and sorrows end. a Note that couplets can form parts of longer stanzas. In fact, the couplet that often completes a sonnet, such as the one shown here from Shakespeare's Sonnet 30, usually is not printed with a line break. Instead, all 14 lines are presented as one unit.

Tercet

A tercet is a stanza of three lines with one of these rhyme schemes:aaa or aba. This aaa example is from Lord Tennyson's "The Eagle": He clasps the crag with crooked hands; a Close to the sun in lonely lands, a Ring'd with the azure world, he stands. a Here's an example of an aba tercet. These lines are from Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind": O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, a Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead b Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing. a

Select the correct answer. In this excerpt from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven," identify the sound devices in the order in which they appear in the underlined parts. While I nodded, nearly napping, Suddenly there came a tapping As if someone gently rapping, rapping At my chamber door Tis a visitor, I muttered, Only this, and nothing more A) alliteration, onomatopoeia, repetition B) consonance, alliteration, assonance C) alliteration, consonance, onomatopoeia D) assonance, consonance, repetition

A) alliteration, onomatopoeia, repetition

Slant rhyme

Also called half rhyme, slant rhyme, near rhyme, oblique rhyme, and off rhyme. It is a rhyme in which either the vowels or the consonants of stressed syllables are identical. Note the slant rhyme in this excerpt from "Easter, 1916" by William Butler Yeats: I have met them at close of day Coming with vivid faces From counter or desk among grey Eighteenth-century houses.

Octave

An octave is a stanza of eight lines with varying rhyme schemes, such as this abbaabba rhyme scheme in William Wordsworth's "London, 1802": Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour: a England hath need of thee: she is a fen. b Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen, b Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, a Have forfeited their ancient English dower. a Of inward happiness. We are selfish men; b Oh! raise us up, return to us again; b And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. a

Select the correct answer. Which of the following is a characteristic of a haiku? A. It analyzes the personal life of the poet. B. It is accompanied by a painting. C. It explores nature and captures the essence of a moment. D. It describes a natural phenomenon and its effect on people.

C. It explores nature and captures the essence of a moment.

Select the correct answer. Which rhyme usually occurs in the final stressed syllable of a line, as seen in this excerpt from John Donne's "A Lecture Upon the Shadow"? Stand still, and I will read to thee A lecture, love, in Love's philosophy. A. feminine rhyme B. slant rhyme C. masculine rhyme D. eye rhyme

C. masculine rhyme

Select the correct answer. The underlined words in this excerpt from "The Bells" by Edgar Allan Poe are examples of which sound device? Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells— From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. A. alliteration B. repetition C. onomatopoeia D. assonance

C. onomatopoeia MAY BE WRONG

Select the correct answer. Which figure of speech does the speaker in the poem use to emphasize why he longs to be at sea? A. alliteration B. onomatopoeia C. repetition D. assonance

C. repetition

Types of Rhyme

Feminine rhyme, on the other hand, is a two-syllable, or double, rhyme that occurs in both the stressed syllable and the unstressed syllable that follows it. Take a look at the feminine end rhyme in these lines from "London, 1802" by William Wordsworth: Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,Have forfeited their ancient English dower

Type your response in the box. Here's a chance for you to find sound elements in a poem. Read "The Sparrow" by Paul Laurence Dunbar and try to find the general meaning of the poem. Then work on analyzing the rhyme pattern, the stanza and the line structure, and the rhythm. Make a list of the poem's characteristics, and briefly describe how they appear in the poem.

Here are some points that you might have included in your answer: The poem has two stanzas of eight lines each. The rhyme scheme is aabbccdd, eeffgghh. The rhythm is unstressed-stressed, or iambic. With four iambs per line (eight syllables), the poem is in iambic tetrameter. Each stanza presents a separate idea. The second stanza presents a philosophical view. Sound devices such as rhyme and rhythm create a singsong quality.

Rhyme Sceme ABAB

In this stanza from William Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," the first and third lines rhyme, and the second and fourth lines rhyme. The rhyme scheme is abab. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the Milky Way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay:

Masculine rhyme

Is a one-syllable, or single, rhyme that usually occurs in the last stressed syllable of a line, as in these lines from John Donne's "A Lecture Upon the Shadow": These three hours that we have spent Walking here, two shadows went

Feminine Rhyme

Is a two-syllable, or double, rhyme that occurs in both the stressed syllable and the unstressed syllable that follows it. Take a look at the feminine end rhyme in these lines from "London, 1802" by William Wordsworth: Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, Have forfeited their ancient English dower

Why Meter Matters

Just what accounts for rhythm in poetry? It can be created in many ways—for example, through repeated words or phrases, pauses, or rhyme. Meter, however, is one of the most important ways that poets create rhythm. Meter gives poetry its musical quality. Remember that the most basic unit of meter is the foot. A foot is a recurring pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. The number of feet in a line of poetry is its meter. In iambic and trochaic meters, each foot contains two syllables. The feet in this line from Thomas Day's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" are iambs, which have an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable: The cur | few tolls | the knell | of par | ting day. This line from Robert Browning's "One Word More" is trochaic. Each foot has a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable. There they | are, my | fifty | men and | women

My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die!The Child is father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety. Now read this literal paraphrase of Wordsworth's poem: The sight of a rainbow has always had an immediate and intensely positive emotional effect on me. I would rather die than lose my ability to experience this effect. Every adult is a child at heart. I hope that all my life I am able to love the beauty of nature.

Let's look at how these two pieces of text are different. The lines of poetry have a musical quality that is not found in the paraphrase and that is not common in everyday writing. Like most poems, this one is divided into lines, while the paraphrase is made up of sentences that follow one another. The groups of lines in a poem form stanzas, while the sentences in prose form paragraphs. This poem has only one stanza, and the paraphrase has just one paragraph. But longer poems are often divided into several stanzas. This poem has a rhythmic pattern in which a stressed syllable is followed by an unstressed one. Notice the da-DUM pattern as you read the first two lines . Also, the lines vary in the number of syllables each has. Six of the nine lines have eight syllables, but the second line has six and the sixth line has four. As you get to know the poem better, you can see how those two lines stand out because they're shorter. Rhyme and repetition give the lines sound coherence. The last words in each line, behold and old, sky and die, and began and man, form rhyming pairs. The phrases "so was it," "so is it," and "so be it" are examples of repetition.

Unrhymed verse

Look closely at the the following poem, "After the Sea-Ship" by Walt Whitman. It's an example of unrhymed verse. The poem uses repetition of structure and ideas instead of rhyme as a sound effect. After the Sea-Ship—after the whistling winds; After the white-gray sails, taut to their spars and ropes, Below, a myriad, myriad waves, hastening, lifting up their necks, Tending in ceaseless flow toward the track of the ship: Waves of the ocean, bubbling and gurgling, blithely prying, Waves, undulating waves—liquid, uneven, emulous waves, Toward that whirling current, laughing and buoyant, with curves, Where the great Vessel, sailing and tacking, displaced the surface;

Line and Stanza

Poems have lines of words, and groups of lines form stanzas. The stanza in this excerpt from a poem by William Blake, for example, is made up of 10 lines: The Echoing Green The sun does arise, And make happy the skies; The merry bells ring To welcome the Spring; The skylark and thrush, The birds of the bush, Sing louder around To the bells' cheerful sound; While our sports shall be seen On the echoing green. Note that lines in a poem don't always end with a period, a semicolon, or even a comma. Sometimes a sentence continues into the next line, and it might stop mid-line. In this sample stanza, none of the sentences end mid-line, but several span two lines. Notice how some of the sentences in this stanza cross lines.

How Sound Affects Poetry

Poetry has a long history as an oral medium.Ancient poets recited long stories in poetic form. Literature and historical events were passed from generation to generation in this oral form. These stories included rhythm, meter, and rhyme, as well as other sound devices, to maintain an audience's interest and to make them easier to memorize. The same qualities that make song lyrics easier to remember formed poetic structures. Although poetry has been in print for many centuries now, it is still connected to its early history. That history includes devices for controlling the sounds of words as they are combined.

Why Rhyme Rates

Remember how nursery rhymes got your attention as a child because of their singsong tunes and repetitions of matching sounds? Not all poems rhyme, but the use of rhyme is a characteristic associated with poetry. Rhyme schemes help maintain the reader's attention. As noted earlier in the lesson, rhyme scheme is the repeated pattern of end rhymes in the stanzas of a poem. In an analysis of poetry, the rhyme scheme of a poem is marked using letters. Lines that have the same end rhyme are marked with the same letter. Together, the letters indicate the rhyme scheme. Let's look at some examples of poems that follow particular rhyme schemes.

Internal rhyme

Rhyme that occurs within a line of verse is internal rhyme: In the grey grains of sand The dark veins of dropping rain

Rhythm and Meter

Rhythm and meter shape how a poem sounds. Rhythm is the beat of a poem, the pattern of sound underlying the words. One way to create rhythm is through meter. The foot is the most basic unit of meter in poetry, and the iamb is the most common type of foot. An iamb is one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Together, these syllables form the rhythm da-DUM. The number of times a foot, or one da-DUM, is used in a line is that line's meter. Let's look at the meter in the first two lines of William Wordsworth's poem "My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold." The first line has four iambs, or four da-DUMs, which makes it tetrameter (tetra- means "four"). So we would say that the meter of the first line is iambic tetrameter. The second line has three iambs. Its meter is iambic trimeter (tri- means "three"). My heart | leaps up | when I | beholdA rain | bow in | the sky: Sonnets are often written in iambic pentameter (penta- means "five").They have a pattern of five iambs, or five da-DUMs, per line. This line from William Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 is in iambic pentameter: Shall I | compare | thee to | a sum | mer's day? The following lines, spoken by Romeo in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, are also in iambic pentameter: But, soft! | what light | through yon | der win | dow breaks? It is | the east, | and Ju | liet is | the sun:

Type your response in the box. What is the effect of the haiku structure on this poem? How does the line structure help describe the subject(s)? And how does a haiku compare to a rhyming and longer poem in terms of its effect on you as a reader?

Sample Answer: The haiku structure lends simplicity to the poem. The poem presents a concrete image from nature. A haiku conveys meaning with a few words, while a longer poem uses literary devices to help convey its message. It is not always easy to grasp the meaning of a haiku. While a longer poem may paint a more detailed picture, a haiku gives the reader a brief, but powerful, image or idea to consider.

Type your response in the box. Read Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "A Musical instrument." Describe the rhyme scheme and the stanza pattern. What effect do they have on the poem?

Sample Answer: The poem has seven stanzas, which follow the abaccb rhyme scheme. So all of the stanzas are sestets. The poem repeats a lot of words, especially "the great god Pan," so that each stanza feels connected to the others. That repetition and the rhythm make the poem seem songlike, giving it a light and fanciful feel. However, some of Pan's actions are destructive. While his actions may come from a whimsical motive, he seems oblivious to the consequences (he acts with abandon, "as a great god can"). As the stanzas progress, they also tell a story, including how Pan as a Greek god makes a musical instrument out of a reed he finds in the river. This story reflects the belief that Pan gave humans poetry and music. The combination of story development across the stanzas and the playfulness of the lines within and across stanzas both paint a picture and tell a story.

Type your response in the box. Sonnet 18 uses sound devices for emphasis and effect. What sound devices are used in the final couplet of the sonnet that sets it apart from the rest of the poem?

Sample Answer: The repetition of "so long" in both lines ties them together as one unit. In the last line, many similar sounding words (for example,givesandlives) are repeated. The use of one-syllable words in the couplet makes it seem simpler than the rest of the poem. The couplet is a strong statement of the poet's belief that art can immortalize beauty.