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Tetrameter, Pentameter, and Hexameter
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Poetic Meters:
Tetrameter, Pentameter, and Hexameter
By Elly Haljiti
Terminology
Meter: each unit of rythm in poetry, which is made up of stressed and unstressed syllables; the pattern of beats
Terminology
Stressed Syllables: /
Unstressed Syllables: u
Tetrameter
A line made up of four feet (four measures)
Tetrameter
Different Types: iambic, trochiac, dactylic, anapestic
Example 1:
A Visit from St. Nicholas by Clement Clarke Moore
(written in the early 19th century)
u u / u u / u u / u u /
'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
u u / u u / u u / u u /
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
u u / u u / u u / u /
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care...
Example 1:
Example 2:
"To Helen" by Edgar Allan Pow (1831)
u / u / u / u /
Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
u / u / u / u /
That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,
The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
Example 2:
Pentameter
A line of poetry made up of five feet.
Different Types: iambic, trochiac, dactylic, anapestic
(Same as Tetrameter)
Example 1:
"Sonnet 18" by William Shakespeare
u / u / u / u / u /
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
u / u / u / u / u /
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
u / u / u / u / u /
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
u / u / u / u / u /
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Example 1:
Example 2:
"Hamlet" by William Shakespeare
(Act 1, Scene 2)
Example 2:
u / u / u / u / u /
O that this too too solid flesh would melt,
u / u / u / u / u /
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!
u / u / u / u / u /
Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d
His canon ’gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God!
Example 3:
Though wise men at their end know dark is right
Because their words had forked no lightining, they
do not go gentle into that good night.
-Dylan Thomas' "Do not go gently into that good night"
Example 3:
"From every mountainside, let freedom ring."
-Martin Luther King Jr
Hexameter
A line made up of six feet; six measures of beat
Used in Greek and Latin peices
Example 1:
Then, at the last and only couplet fraught
With some unmeaning thing they call a thought,
A needless Alexandrine ends the song,
u / u / u / u / u / u /
That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.
-“An Essay on Criticism” by Alexander Pope
Example 1:
Summary
Tetrameter - 4 feet of rhythm in a line
Pentameter - 5 feet of rhythm in a line
Hexameter - 6 feet of rhythm in a line
Summary
= each unit of rhythm in poetry (aka meter)
From Time Magazine, Taylor Swift's "We are Never Getting Back Together" written as a Shakespearean Sonnet.
From Time Magazine, Taylor Swift's "We are Never Getti...