LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Meter (Poetry): Lines
built 659 days ago
In Spanish poetry the meter is the determined by the number of syllables the verse has. Still it is the phonetic accent in the last word of the verse decides the final count of the line. If the accent of the final word is at the last syllable, then the poetic rule states that one syllable shall be added to the actual count of syllables in said line... having a higher number of poetic syllables than the number of grammatical syllables. If the accent lies on the second to last syllable of the last word in the verse, then the final count of poetic syllables will be the same as the grammatical number of syllables. Furthermore if the accent lies on the third to last syllable, then one syllables is subtracted from the actual count, having then less poetic syllables than grammatical syllables. Interestingly Spanish poetry uses poetic licenses, unique to romantic languages, to change the number of syllables by manipulating mainly the vowels in the line.
Source:
Meter (British English spelling: metre) describes the linguistic sound patterns of a verse. Scansion is the analysis of poetry's metrical and book of poetry rhythmic patterns. Prosody is sometimes used to describe
Source:
In Italian poetry, meter is determined solely by the position of the last accent in a line. Syllables are enumerated with respect to a verse which ends with a paroxytone, so that a Septenary (literally, 'having seven syllables') is defined as a verse whose last accent falls on the sixth syllable: it may so contain eight syllables (Ei fu. Siccome immobile) or just six (la terra al nunzio sta). Moreover, when a word ends with a vowel and the next one starts with a vowel, they are considered to be in the same syllable: so Gli anni e i giorni consists of only four syllables ("Gli an" "ni e i" "gior" "ni"). Because of the mostly trochaic nature of the Italian language, verses with an even number of syllables are far easier to compose, and the Novenary is usually regarded as the most difficult verse.
Source:
[I]ambic pentameter" is a meter comprising five feet per line, in which the predominant kind of foot is the "iamb." This metric system originated in ancient Greek poetry, and was used by poets such as Pindar and Sappho, and by the great tragedians of Athens. Similarly, "dactylic hexameter," comprises six feet per line, of which the dominant kind of foot is the "dactyl." Dactylic hexameter was the traditional meter of Greek epic poetry, the earliest extant examples of which are the works of Homer and Hesiod.
Source:
Poetic Meter: Word choices that create a pattern of sounds, stresses, word lengths, syllables, or beats that are repeated to create a line of poetry. In English the focus is generally on stresses and beats, but all patterns make for possible meters and other languages often focus on different types of patterns.
Source:
Most English meter is classified according to the same system as Classical meter with an important difference: stressed and unstressed syllables take the place of long and short syllables. The most frequently encountered line of English verse is the iambic pentameter, five iambic feet per line. The verse portions of Shakespeare's plays, John Milton's Paradise Lost, most sonnets, and much else besides in English are written in iambic pentameter. A rhymed pair of lines of iambic pentameter make a heroic couplet, a verse form which was used so often in the eighteenth century that it is now used mostly for humorous effect.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Lines