In many Western classical poetic traditions, the metre of a verse can be described as a sequence of feet, each foot being a specific sequence of syllable types — such as relatively unstressed/stressed (the norm for English poetry) or long/short (as in most classical Latin and Greek poetry).
Iambic pentameter, a common meter in English poetry, is based on a normative sequence of five iambic feet or iambs, each consisting of a relatively unstressed syllable (here represented with "×" above the syllable) followed by a relatively stressed one (here represented with "/" above the syllable) — "da-DUM" = "× /" :
× / × / × / × / × / So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, × / × / × / × / × / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.This approach to analyzing and classifying metres originates from ancient Greek tragedians and poets such as Homer, Pindar, Hesiod, and Sappho.
Note that some metres have an overall rhythmic pattern to the line that cannot easily be described using feet. This occurs in Sanskrit poetry; see Vedic metre and Sanskrit metre). (Although this poetry is in fact specified using feet, each "foot" is more or less equivalent to an entire line.) However, it also occurs in some Western metres, such as the hendecasyllable favoured by Catullus, which can be described as:
x x - u u - u - u - -(where "-" = long, "u" = short, and "x x" can be realized as "- u" or "- -" or "u -")
Read more about this topic: Metre (poetry)
Famous quotes containing the word feet:
“A word perhaps loud spoken you may get,
Or hear our feet when heavily they tread;
But he who speaks, or him who’s spoken to,
Must both remain as strangers still to you.”
—Jones Very (1831–1880)
“And men left down their work and came,
And women with petticoats coloured like flame.
And little bare feet that were blue with cold,
Went dancing back to the age of gold,
And all the world went gay, went gay,
For half an hour in the street to-day.”
—“Seumas” “O’Sullivan” (1879–1958)
“It may seem strange that any road through such a wilderness should be passable, even in winter, when the snow is three or four feet deep, but at that season, wherever lumbering operations are actively carried on, teams are continually passing on the single track, and it becomes as smooth almost as a railway.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)