English poetry employs five basic rhythms of varying stressed and unstressed syllables. Each unit of rhythm is called a "foot" of poetry.
Iambic pentameter (5 iambs, 10 syllables) (unstressed, stressed)
That time | of year | thou mayst | in me | behold - Sonnet 73 by William Shakespeare
Spondaic meter*
With swift, | slow; sweet, | sour; adazzle, | dim - Pied Beauty by Manley Hopkins
trochaic tetrameter (4 trochees, 8 syllables)
Tell me | not in | mournful | numbers - A Psalm of Life by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
anapestic trimeter (3 anapests, 9 syllables)
And the sound | of a voice | that is still - Break, Break, Break by Alfred Lord Tennyson
dactylic hexameter (6 dactyls, 17 syllables; a trochee replaces the last dactyl)
This is the | forest pri | meval, the | murmuring | pine and the | hemlocks - Evangeline by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Each line of a poem contains a certain number of feet of iambs, trochees, spondees, dactyls or anapests. A line of one foot is a monometer, 2 feet is a dimeter, and so on--trimeter (3), tetrameter (4), pentameter (5), hexameter (6), heptameter (7), and octameter (8). The number of syllables in a line varies therefore according to the meter
*It is rare to find a poem written entirely in spondee, but poets make use of the spondee in combination with other metrical feet.
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English GCSE AQA: Comprehensive Analysis of the Power and Conflict Poems
Non-FictionI decided to make a book on all the Power and Conflict poems for the English GCSE exams. NOTE: This book's analyses are very long and wordy due to much information from different sources. Although they are segmented, some may not find too much comfo...
