Meter (poetry)

“ Metre is a difficult subject in which to lay down general principles, lest they become artificial rules. Every poem that is really great shows something new in the way of combining imperfect feet, and the student must study the movement for himself.
Many will be tempted to ask, “What has metre to do with the monologue?” It is true that metre belongs to all poetry, but the monologue has some specific and peculiar uses of metre, and, more than any other form of poetry except the poetic drama, demands the living voice. ”

“ His meter is among the most discussed in our literature. Its merits and demerits are quite clear to view. Against it we can urge its artificiality, its lack of originality, and the vile creeping paralysis that it communicated to the other metrical forms. Yet in its favor we must recognize its strength, unbreakable and pliable, like a strong bow, its clearness, point, and artistic brevity, and its incomparable excellence in some forms of satire and narrative. It is unprofitable to compare it with blank verse and other forms. We must recognize it as in a class apart. ”

“ The discussion on the powers of metre, in the Preface, is highly ingenious, and touches at all points on truth. But I cannot find any statement of its powers considered abstractly and separately. On the contrary, Mr. Wordsworth seems always to estimate metre by the powers which it exerts during (and, as I think, in consequence of) its combination with other elements of poetry. ”

“ Metre is the subject of the Third Part. The object of this Part (as also, in a great measure, of the Chapter just mentioned belonging to the Second Part) is to enable the pupil to read English Poetry with intelligence, interest, and appreciation. To teach any one how to read a verse so as to mark the metre on the one hand, without on the other hand converting the metrical line into a monotonous doggerel, is not so easy a task as might be supposed. Many of the rules stated in this Part have been found of practical utility in teaching pupils to hit the mean. ”

“ The construction and evolution of the system of electrical units now in general use began in Europe where the metric system originated. Two of the basic units, the centimeter and the gram, are metric units; the second of time is universally employed in time measurements.
The meter, 3.2808 feet = 39.37 inches, is theoretically the one ten-millionth part of the earth’s quadrant ”

“ It is a phenomenon which deserves the fullest recognition, that the needy inhabitants of a barren country should thus have produced an artistic poetry distinguished by so high a degree of uniformity. Even the extraordinary strict metrical system, observed by poets who had no inkling of theory and no knowledge of an alphabet, excites surprise. In the most ancient poems the metrical form is as scrupulously regarded as in later compositions. The only poem which shows unusual metrical freedom is the above-mentioned song of ‛Abīd. ”

“ Even, however, if we confine ourselves to mile, yard, foot and inch, we have the following six connecting ratios: 3, 12, 36, 1,760, 5,280, 63,360.
In the metric system there is the meter, about ten per cent, longer than the yard, and its decimal derivatives, all evaluated at a glance by a shift of the decimal point. In English speaking countries, roads are measured in miles and furlongs, short distances in yards, houses or ships in feet, horses in hands and small objects in inches. ”

“ The music of mere metre performs but a limited, yet a very peculiar and subtly ascertained function, in Wordsworth's poetry. With him, metre is but an additional grace, accessory to that deeper music of words and sounds, that moving power, which they exercise in the nobler prose no less than in formal poetry. ”

“ METRE AND RHYTHM IN GREEK TRAGEDY § I. Introduction
Poetry is illuminating utterance consisting of words the successive sounds of which are arranged according to a recurrent pattern. The soul of poetry is this illumination, its body this recurrent pattern of sounds; and it is with the body that we are now to deal. At the outset we must distinguish carefully between rhythm and metre. Rhythm is the recurrence just mentioned—the structure; metre is the gathering together of sounds into masses upon which rhythm shall do its work. Metre, so to put it, makes the bricks, while rhythm makes the arch. ”

“ The strong meter, causing a distinct accent on the first note of each measure, will at once be noted, especially if it be contrasted with the more moderate accentuation of the folk-songs of Chapter II. Such strong meter is naturally characteristic of all dance tunes, intended as they are to guide and stimulate the regular steps of the dancer. ”

“ The metre which I selected for each is the thirteen- syllable trochaic of "Locksley Hall;" and it is curious to observe the different effect of the metre according as it is written in two lines or in four. In the "Locksley Hall" couplet its movement is undoubtedly trochaic; but when it is expanded into a quatrain, as in Mrs. Browning's poem of "Lady Geraldine's Courtship," the movement changes, and instead of a more or less equal stress on the alternate syllables, the full ictus is only felt in one syllable out of every four; in ancient metrical language the metre becomes Ionic a minore. ”

“ Metra, met′ra, n. a pocket-instrument, combining the uses of thermometer, level, plummet, and lens. [Gr., pl. of metron, measure.]
Metre, mē′tėr, n. that regulated succession of certain groups of syllables in which poetry is usually written—these groups of long and short (classical) or accented (English) syllables being called feet: rhythm: verse, or poetry generally: a plan of versification, the character of a stanza as consisting of a given number of lines composed of feet of a given number, construction, and accent: musical time.—adjs. ”

“ In Caines cynne
þone cwealm gewræc.
Cædmon.
Alliteration is the general character of all the early Gothic metres. (See Rask's Anglo-Saxon Grammar, Rask, On the Icelandic Prosody, and Conybeare, On Anglo-Saxon Poetry.)
2. Assonant metres.—In assonant metres a certain number of words, within a certain period, must end with a similar articulation. All rhymes and all approaches to rhyme, form the assonant metres. The word assonant has a limited as well as a general sense.
§ 632. All metre goes by the name of poetry, although all poetry is not metrical. ”

“ The great poet can bend any meter or stanza form to his use, as witness Thomas Hood with his galloping stanzas in the “Bridge of Sighs,” but an ordinary mortal must produce his effects more obviously. The greater skill one has the greater liberties one can take in his choice of materials, just as a clever after-dinner speaker may say many things which from a less tactful person would be deemed offensive. ”

“ His plastic power and flexible charm of verse, though shown only in short flashes of song, lose nothing of the old freshness and life. To the end he was the same whose "sovereign sway and masterdom" of music could make sweet and strong even the feeble and tuneless form of metre called hexameters in English; if form of metre that may be called which has neither metre nor form. But the majestic rush and roll of that irregular anapæstic measure used once or twice by this supreme master of them all, no student can follow without an exultation of enjoyment. ”

“ Accordingly, the two basal types which lie at the foundation of classical metre are "longs" and "shorts." The convention was that a long syllable was equal to two short ones: accordingly there was a real truth in calling the succession of such "feet" metre, for the length, or weight, of the syllables forming them could be, and was, measured. What has to be realized in speaking of ancient metre is that the value of these feet was defined with exactitude, not left uncertain, as it is in modern European verse, when accent is almost always made the guiding principle. ”

“ To make the different planes of action distinct, each has its own metre. These metres are the short octosyllabic couplet, the heroic decasyllable, the alliterative unrhymed verse of the body of the play, and, for the "Music," an exquisite invention of rhymed dactylics. The way in which they are interwoven is a masterpiece of metrical device. In the two scenes of the induction (to use the appropriate term of the Renaissance dramatists) the ground is laid of the whole metrical system of the poem; in the first scene by a single phrase of the Music ”

“ In “A railway collision” the metre proved to be very troublesome. It is certainly very modern, the lines being respectively, nine, ten, eleven and twelve syllables long. We do not know the rule which governs such a metre, and are inclined to ascribe it that licence which every true poet sometimes takes.
Considering the difficulty, we were surprised to find from thirty to forty solutions giving the verse correctly. Three out of the four lines were not difficult to solve, but the progressive nature of the metre not being established, the first was not so easy. ”

“ The metric system is the only system of weights and measures that can be called international. Moreover, only the very best available system should be good enough for Americans.
It is sometimes complained that the meter as a unit should be set aside because it is inaccurate. ”

“ I know no other verse in which the effects of music are so precisely copied in metre. Shelley, you feel, sings like a bird; Blake, like a child or an angel; but Coleridge certainly writes music.
The metre of the "Ancient Mariner" is a re-reading of the familiar ballad- metre, in which nothing of the original force, swiftness or directness is lost, while a new subtlety, a wholly new music, has come into it. The metre of "Christabel" is even more of an invention, and it had more immediate consequences. The poem was begun in 1797, and not published till 1816 ”

“ If the meter exactly fits when applied to a body, if we point the body and consequently the meter in the sense of the motion of the earth, it will not cease to exactly fit in another orientation, and that although the body and the meter have changed in length as well as orientation, and precisely because the change is the same for one as for the other. But it is quite different if we measure a length, not now with a meter, but by the time taken by light to pass along it, and this is just what Michelson has done. ”

“ Advantages of the Metric System.—First, it is a decimal system; second, the same form and prefixes are used in every table; third, the standards of length (meter) , volume (liter) , and mass (kilogram) bear a simple relation [Pg 11] to one another. This simple relation between the three standard units may be given thus: first, the liter is a cubic decimeter, and second, the kilogram is the mass of a liter of water. (See Fig. 5) Since the liter is a cubic decimeter, the length of one side is 10 cm. The liter therefore holds 1000 ccm. (10 × 10 × 10) . Therefore, 1 liter = 1 cu. ”

“ The question where metre comes in in poetry, whether it is simply a means of accentuating rhythm, and is not the rhythm itself, and whether it is legitimate to do as Whitman did, to prolong the rhythmic phrase at the expense of metre, until the sense is completed,—all this was a problem for the professors and the critics to decide, and they might wrangle as they pleased. ”

“ I will, in conclusion, add merely a word or two on the point of verse-measure. Dramatic metre is best when it lies midway between the tranquil, uniform flow of the hexameter and the more interrupted and split-up syllabic metres congenial to the Lyric. In this respect the iambic metre is above all others commendable. For the iambus, with the rhythm of its onward movement, which may be either accelerate [Pg 270] d by anapaests, or be made more solemn and weighty with the spondee, forms a most fitting accompaniment to the march of the action ”

“ What the radicals so wantonly disregard in their eccentric performances is unity of thought. Amidst their wildly repeated leaps from one rough metre to another, they ignore the underlying uniformity of each of their poems. Scene may change; atmosphere may vary; yet one poem cannot carry but one definite message, and to suit this ultimate and fundamental message but one metre must be selected and sustained. To accommodate the minor inequalities of tone in a poem, one regular metre will amply lend itself to diversity. ”

“ In the first instance we may trace it in those hymns possessing a content as yet more akin to the epic mode, which do not so much express in their epic metre a personal enthusiasm as they set before us a plastic image of gods in deliberately objective outlines. The next step, so far as metre is concerned, we mark in the elegiac syllabic measure, which associates the pentameter with the hexameter, which, in the regular recurrence of its ending after the hexameter, and with its two equally divided sections, opens the way to the complete singularity of the verse strophe. ”

“ The sublimer the poem, the painting, or any work of art, the more will the smallest detail be consistent with the whole and a necessary part of the expression.
Metre has been studied too much as a matter of print. Few recognize the fact that metre is necessarily a part of vocal rather than of verbal expression, and can only be suggested in print.
Metre can be revealed only by the human voice. As a printed word is only a sign, so print can afford a hint only of the nature of metre. Its study, accordingly, must be associated with the living voice and the vocal interpretation of literature. ”