Common Metre - Examples

Examples

Common metre is often used in hymns, like this one by John Newton. (see Meter (hymn))

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.

— from John Newton's "Amazing Grace"

William Wordsworth's "Lucy Poems" are also in common metre.

A slumber did my spirit seal;

I had no human fears:

She seemed a thing that could not feel

The touch of earthly years.

— from William Wordsworth's "A slumber did my spirit seal"

Many of the poems of Emily Dickinson use ballad metre.

Because I could not stop for Death,

He kindly stopped for me;

The Carriage held but just Ourselves

And Immortality.

— from Emily Dickinson's poem #712

A modern example of ballad metre is the theme song to Gilligan's Island, making it possible to sing any other ballad to that tune. The first two lines actually contain anapaests in place of iambs. This is an example of a ballad metre which is metrically less strict than common metre.

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,

a tale of a fateful trip.

That started from this tropic port,

aboard this tiny ship.

Another example is the folk song "House Of The Rising Sun".

There is a house in New Orleans,

They call the rising sun.

And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy,

And God, I know I'm one.

"Gascoigns Good Night", by the English Renaissance poet George Gascoigne, employs fourteeners.

The stretching arms, the yawning breath, which I to bedward use,

Are patterns of the pangs of death, when life will me refuse:

And of my bed each sundry part in shadows doth resemble,

The sundry shapes of death, whose dart shall make my flesh to tremble.

— from George Gascoigne's "Gascoigns Good Night"

"America the Beautiful" by Katherine Lee Bates employs the common meter double, using a standard CM rhyme scheme for the first iteration, and a ballad metre scheme for the second.

O beautiful for spacious skies,

For amber waves of grain,

For purple mountain majesties

Above the fruited plain!

America! America!

God shed his grace on thee

And crown thy good with brotherhood

From sea to shining sea!