Compositional Patterns of Rhythmical Arrangement. Metre and Line

The most observable and widely recognized compositional patterns of rhythm making up classical verse are based on:

alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables;
equilinearity, that is, an equal number of syllables in the lines;
a natural pause at the end of the line, the line being a more or less complete semantic unit;
identily of stanza pattern;
established patterns of rhyming.

Less observable are all kinds of deviations from these rules, some of them going so far that classical poetry ceases to be strictly classical and becomes what is called free verse, which in extreme cases borders on prose.

Classic English verse is called syllabo-tonic. Two parameters are taken into account in defining it: the number of syllables (syllabo) and the distribution of stressed (tonic).

There are five of them:

1. Iambic metre, in which the unstressed syllable is followed by a stressed one. Its graphically represented thus: (ᴗ ‒).

2. Trochaic metre, where the order is reversed, i.e. a stressed syllable is followed by one unstressed thus (‒ᴗ).

3. Dactylic metre - one stressed syllable is followed by framed by two untressed (‒ᴗᴗ).

4. Amphibrachic metre - one stressed syllable is framed by two unstressed (ᴗ‒ᴗ).

5. Anapaestic metre - two unstressed syllables are followed by one stressed (ᴗᴗ‒)

These arrangements of qualitatively different syllables are the units of the metre, the repetition of which makes verse. One unit is called a foot. The number of feet in a line varies, but has its limit; it rarely exceeds eight.

If the line consist of only one foot it’s called a monometer; a line consisting of two feet is a dimeter; three-trimeter; four—tetrameter; five-pentameter; six-hexameter; seven-septameter; eight-octameter. In defining the measure, that is the kind of ideal metrical scheme of a verse, it’s necessary to point out both the type of metre and length of the line. Thus, a line that consists of four iambic feet is called iambic tetrameter; correspondingly a line consisting of eight trochaic feet will be called trochaic octameter, and so on.

English verse is predominantly iambic. This is sometimes explained by the iambic tendency of the English language in general. Most of the English words have a trochaic tendency, that is the stress falls on the first syllable of two-syllabic words. But in actual speech these words are preceded by non-stressed articles, prepositions, conjunctions or by unstressed syllables of preceding words thus imparting an iambic character to English speech. As a result iambic metre is more common in English verse than any other metre.

Sometimes we find irregularities or modifications of its normal metrical pattern. These modification generally have some special significance, usually connected with the sense, though in some cases they may be due to the nature of the language material itself. This is called a pyrrhic foot, for example:

So, that now to still the beating of my heart I stood repeating (Poe)

Of the units of verse rhythm the following have been named: the syllable, the foot, the line and the stanza.

The stanza is the largest unit in verse. It is composed of a number of lines having a definite measure and rhyming system which is repeated throughout the poem.

The heroic couplet – a stanza that consists of 2 iambic pentameters with the rhyming pattern aa.

“Then flashed the living lightning from her eyes,

And screams of horror rent the affrighted skies.

Not louder shrieks to pitying heaven are cast,

When husbands or when lapdogs breathe their last”.

The Spencerian stanza, that consists of 9 lines, the first eight of which are iambic pentameters and the ninth is one foot longer, that is, a iambic hexameter. The rhyming scheme is ababbcbccc. Byron’s “Childe Harold” is written in this stanza.
The stanza named ottava rima has also been popular in English poetry. It is composed of 8 iambic pentameters, the rhyming scheme being abababcc. This type of stanza was borrowed from Italian poetry and was widely used by Philip Sidney and other poets of the 16^th century.
A looser form of stanza is the ballad stanza. This is generally an alternation of iambic tetrameters with iambic dimeters (or trimesters), and the rhyming scheme is abcb; that is, tetrameters are not rhymed – the trimesters are.

“They took a plough and plough’d him down (a)

Put clods upon his head;(b)

And they had sworn a solemn oath (c)

John Barleycorn was dead.(b)”

One of the most popular stanzas, which bears the name of stanza only conventionally, is the sonnet. It is a complete independent work of a definite literary genre. The English sonnet is composed of 14 iambic pentameters with the following rhyming scheme: ababcdcdefefgg, that is, 3 quatrains with cross rhymes and a couplet at the end.

Verse remains classical if it retains its metrical scheme. There are, however, types of verse which are not classical. One of the most popular is free verse. It departs considerably from the strict requirements of classical verse, but its departures are legalized. Free verse is recognized by lack of strictness in its rhythmical design. It is characterized by:

a combination of various metrical feet in the line;
absence of equilinearity;
varying length.

Rhyme, however, is generally retained.

“I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,

From the seas and the streams;

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid

In the noonday dreams”.

Accented verse is a type of verse in which only the number of stresses in the line is taken into consideration. Accented verse is not syllabo-tonic but tonic. In its extreme form the lines have no pattern of regular metrical feet not fixed length, there is n o notion of stanza, and there are no rhymes.

“Work-work-work!

Till the brain begins to swim!

Work-work-work

Till the eyes are heavy and dim!

Seam, and gusset, and band,

Band, and gusset, and seam,-

Till over the buttons I fall asleep,

And sew them on in a dream.”

Accented verse (tonic verse) has a long folklore tradition. Old English verse was tonic but not syllabo-tonic. The latter appeared in English poetry as a borrowing from Greek and Latin poetry, where the alternation was not between stressed and unstressed but between long and short syllables.

2.1.2. Lexical and syntactical features of verse.

The phonetic features of the language of poetry constitute its external aspect. They immediately strike the ear and the eye and therefore are easily distributed. Lexical and syntactical peculiarities will present the substyle as a stylistic entity.

Among the lexical peculiarities of verse the 1^st to be mentioned is imagery, the generic feature of the belles-letters style, that assumes in poetry a compressed form: it is rich in associative power, frequent in occurrence and varied in methods and devices of materialization.

Imagery is a use of language media which will create a sensory perception of an abstract notion by arousing certain associations ( sometimes very remote) between the general and the particular, the abstract and the concrete, the conventional and the factual.

The image, as a purely linguistic notion, is something that must be decoded by the reader. It can be decoded through a fine analysis of the meanings of the given word or word-combination. In decoding a given image, the dictionary meanings, the contextual meanings, the emotional colouring and, last but not least, the associations which are awakened by the image should all be called into play.

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