Meter (hymn) - Hymn and Poetic Meter

Hymn and Poetic Meter

In the English language poetic meters and hymn meters have different starting points but there is nevertheless much overlap. Take the opening lines of the hymn Amazing Grace:

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound

that saved a wretch like me.

Analyzing this, a poet would see a couplet with four iambic metrical feet in the first line and three in the second. A musician would more likely count eight syllables in the first line and six in the second.

Completing that verse:

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound

that saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost, but now am found,

was blind, but now I see.

the hymnist describes it as 8.6.8.6 (or 86.86).

Conventionally most hymns in this 86.86 pattern are iambic (weak-strong syllable pairs). By contrast most hymns in an 87.87 pattern are trochaic, with strong-weak syllable pairs:

Love divine, all loves excelling,

joy of heav'n to earth come down,...

In practice many hymns conform to one of a relatively small number of meters (syllable patterns), and within the most commonly used ones there is a general convention as to whether its stress pattern is iambic or trochaic (or perhaps dactylic). It is rare to find any significant metrical substitution in a well-written hymn; indeed, such variation usually indicates a poorly constructed text.