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The English word "trapeze" is an example of an iambic pair of syllables, since the word is made up of two syllables ("tra-peze") and is pronounced with the stress on the second syllable ("tra-PEZE", rather than "TRA-peze"). A line of iambic pentameter is made up of five such pairs of short/long, or unstressed/stressed, syllables.
Related to iambic heptameter is the more common ballad verse (also called common metre), in which a line of iambic tetrameter is succeeded by a line of iambic trimeter, usually in quatrain form. Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a classic example of this form. The reverse of an iamb is called a trochee.
A metrical foot (aka poetic foot) is the basic repeating rhythmic unit that forms part of a line of verse in most Indo-European traditions of poetry.. In some metres (such as the iambic trimeter) the lines are divided into double feet, called metra (singular: metron).
Iambic tetrameter is a poetic meter in ancient Greek and Latin poetry; as the name of a rhythm, iambic tetrameter consists of four metra, each metron being of the form | x – u – |, consisting of a spondee and an iamb, or two iambs. There usually is a break in the centre of the line, thus the whole line is:
In some kinds of metre, such as the Greek iambic trimeter, two feet are combined into a larger unit called a metron (pl. metra) or dipody. The foot is a purely metrical unit; there is no inherent relation to a word or phrase as a unit of meaning or syntax , though the interplay between these is an aspect of the poet's skill and artistry.
There are numerous examples from the 16th century and a few from the 17th; the most prominent of these is Michael Drayton's Poly-Olbion (1612) in couplets of iambic hexameter. An example from Drayton (marking the six feet on each line): Nor a/ny o/ther wold / like Cot/swold e/ver sped, So rich / and fair / a vale / in for/tuning / to wed.
In English meter indisputable examples are harder to find because metrical feet are identified by stress, and stress is a matter of interpretation. [6] For example, the first part of this line from Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida (in iambic pentameter) would normally be interpreted as two spondees: Crý, crý! Tróy búrns, or élse let ...
The triolet is a close cousin of the rondeau, the rondel, and the rondelet, other French verse forms emphasizing repetition and rhyme.The form stems from medieval French poetry and seems to have had its origin in Picardy.