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The most important Classical metre is the dactylic hexameter, the metre of Homer and Virgil. This form uses verses of six feet. The word dactyl comes from the Greek word daktylos meaning finger, since there is one long part followed by two short stretches. [11] The first four feet are dactyls (daa-duh-duh), but can be spondees (daa-daa). The ...
Lines of poetry made up predominantly of iambs are referred to as iambics or as iambic verse, which is by far the most commonly used metrical verse in English. Its most important form is the 10-syllable iambic pentameter, either rhymed (as in heroic couplets and sonnets) or unrhymed (in blank verse). [35] iambic pentameter idiom idyll imagery ...
Within this form of poetry the most important variations are "folk song" styled verse , "old style" verse , "modern style" verse . In all cases, rhyming is obligatory. The Yuefu is a folk ballad or a poem written in the folk ballad style, and the number of lines and the length of the lines could be irregular.
Old English metre is the conventional name given to the poetic metre in which English language poetry was composed in the Anglo-Saxon period. The best-known example of poetry composed in this verse form is Beowulf, but the vast majority of Old English poetry belongs to the same tradition.
A verse is formally a single metrical line in a poetic composition. [1] However, verse has come to represent any grouping of lines in a poetic composition, with groupings traditionally having been referred to as stanzas. [2] Verse in the uncountable sense refers to poetry in contrast to prose. [3]
The introduction and adaptation of themes, models and verse forms from other European traditions and classical literature, the Elizabethan song tradition, the emergence of a courtly poetry often centred around the figure of the monarch and the growth of a verse-based drama are among the most important of these developments.
Blank verse is poetry written with regular metrical but unrhymed lines, usually in iambic pentameter. It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the 16th century", [1] and Paul Fussell has estimated that "about three quarters of all English poetry is in blank verse". [2]
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and song of Great Britain and Ireland from the Late Middle Ages until the 19th century. They were widely used across Europe, and later in Australia, North Africa, North America and South America.