Metre (poetry) - Feet

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 -")

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Famous quotes containing the word feet:

    There are those who never burn incense when things are going well, but then throw themselves at the Buddha’s feet when crises come.
    Chinese proverb.

    The sugar maple is remarkable for its clean ankle. The groves of these trees looked like vast forest sheds, their branches stopping short at a uniform height, four or five feet from the ground, like eaves, as if they had been trimmed by art, so that you could look under and through the whole grove with its leafy canopy, as under a tent whose curtain is raised.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Greek is the embodiment of the fluent speech that runs or soars, the speech of a people which could not help giving winged feet to its god of art. Latin is the embodiment of the weighty and concentrated speech which is hammered and pressed and polished into the shape of its perfection, as the ethically minded Romans believed that the soul also should be wrought.
    Havelock Ellis (1859–1939)