Common Metre - Variants

Variants

A variant of the common metre is the ballad metre, which was used in ballads. Like common metre, it has stanzas of four iambic lines. The difference is that ballad metre is "less regular and more conversational" than common metre, and does not necessarily rhyme both sets of lines. Only the second and fourth lines must rhyme in ballad metre, in the pattern x-a-x-a.

Another closely related form is the fourteener, consisting of iambic heptameter couplets: instead of alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, rhyming a-b-a-b or x-a-x-a, a fourteener joins the tetrameter and trimeter lines, converting four-line stanzas into couplets of seven iambic feet, rhyming a-a.

The first and third lines in common metre typically have four stresses (tetrameter), and the second and fourth have three stresses (trimeter). Ballad metre sometimes follows this stress pattern less strictly than common metre. The fourteener also gives the poet somewhat greater flexibility, in that its long lines invite the use of variably placed caesuras and spondees to achieve metrical variety, in place of a fixed pattern iambs and line breaks.

Another common adaptation of the common metre is the common metre double, which as the name suggests, is the common meter repeated twice in each stanza, or 8.6.8.6.8.6.8.6. Traditionally the rhyming scheme should also be double the common meter and be a-b-a-b-c-d-c-d, but it often uses the ballad metre style, resulting in x-a-x-a-x-b-x-b. Examples of this variant are the Christmas hymn "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear" and "America the Beautiful".