Political Verse - Form

Form

Each verse is a 15-syllable iambic verse, normally (and in accordance with the ancient Greek poetical tradition) the Political verse is without rhyme. So it is a type of blank verse of iambic heptameter. The meter consists of lines made from seven (“hepta”) feet plus an unstressed syllable. There is a standard cesura (pause in the reading of a line of a verse that does not affect the metrical account of the timing) after the eighth syllable. Rhyme occurs only rarely, especially in the earlier folk songs and poems. Later examples, especially in personal poetry and in songwriting there is rhyme.. In those cases the rhyme scheme is more commonly that of the couplet: aa, or, aa/bb/cc/dd etc; sometimes the rhyme may appear at the end of the cesura and that of the stanza, or in two successive cesurae. Generally speaking though, rhyme is used quite sparingly, either to make a dramatic point or for comic effect.

Each fifteen-syllable verse can be regarded or examined as a "distich" of two verses, one eight-syllable and one seven-syllable. Its form looks as follows:

U - | U - | U - | U - || U - |U - | U - | U

Until the 14th century, the half-foot could begin with two anapests instead of three iambs (Kambylis, A. 1995. Textkritik und Metrik: Überlegungen zu ihrem Verhältnis zueinander. Byzantinische Zeitschrift 88: 38–67):

U U - | U U - | U - || U - |U - | U - | U

U - | U - | U - | U - || U U - | U U - | U

To this day, each half-foot can also begin with a trochee; this is called choriambic, by comparison to its ancient metrical counterpart.

- U | U - | U - | U - || U - |U - | U - | U

- U | U - | U - | U - || - U |U - | U - | U