Sanskrit Versification in Classical Sanskrit poetry is of three kinds. • Syllabic () metres depend on the number of syllables in a verse, with relative freedom in the distribution of light and heavy syllables. This style is derived from older Vedic forms. An example is the
Anuṣṭubh metre found in the great epics, the
Mahabharata and the
Ramayana, which has exactly eight syllables in each line, of which only some are specified as to length. • Syllabo-quantitative () metres depend on syllable count, but the light-heavy patterns are fixed. An example is the
Mandākrāntā metre, in which each line has 17 syllables in a fixed pattern. • Quantitative () metres depend on duration, where each line has a fixed number of
morae, grouped in feet with usually 4
morae in each foot. An example is the
Arya metre, in which each verse has four lines of 12, 18, 12, and 15
morae respectively. In each 4-
mora foot there can be two long syllables, four short syllables, or one long and two short in any order. Standard traditional works on metre are Pingala's and Kedāra's . The most exhaustive compilations, such as the modern ones by Patwardhan and Velankar contain over 600 metres. This is a substantially larger repertoire than in any other metrical tradition.
Tamil The versification in
Tamil is of four types: '
, , and '. • hails for , literally means "speaking metre". It is characterised by four words per line, except the last which gets only three.
Thirukural was written in this metre. • also called hails for , literally means "shouting metre" or "mourning metre". It is characterised by four words per line. It is versified so that the poem reads like prose. It has a minimum of three lines. Asiriyapa is classified into and . • hails for , literally means "jumping metre" or "joyous metre". • hails for , literally means "sleeping metre" or "dull metre". On some special occasions, and are combined to produce , with unspecified metre. Metre variants have been identified for all four metres: , , .
Greek and Latin The
metrical "feet" in the classical languages were based on the length of time taken to pronounce each syllable, which were categorised according to their
weight as either "long" syllables or "short" syllables (indicated as
dum and
di below). These are also called "heavy" and "light" syllables, respectively, to distinguish from long and short vowels. The foot is often compared to a
musical measure and the long and short syllables to whole notes and half notes. In English poetry, feet are determined by emphasis rather than length, with stressed and unstressed syllables serving the same function as long and short syllables in classical metre. The basic unit in Greek and
Latin prosody is a
mora, which is defined as a single short syllable. A long syllable is equivalent to two morae. A long syllable contains either a long vowel, a
diphthong, or a short vowel followed by two or more consonants. Various rules of
elision sometimes prevent a grammatical syllable from making a full syllable, and certain other lengthening and shortening rules (such as
correption) can create long or short syllables in contexts where one would expect the opposite. The most important Classical metre is the
dactylic hexameter, the metre of Homer and Virgil. This form uses verses of six feet. The word
dactyl comes from the Greek word
daktylos meaning
finger, since there is one long part followed by two short stretches. The first four feet are
dactyls (
daa-duh-duh), but can be
spondees (
daa-daa). The fifth foot is almost always a dactyl. The sixth foot is either a spondee or a
trochee (
daa-duh). The initial syllable of either foot is called the
ictus, the basic "beat" of the verse. There is usually a
caesura after the ictus of the third foot. The opening line of the
Aeneid is a typical line of dactylic hexameter: In this example, the first and second feet are dactyls; their first syllables, "Ar" and "rum" respectively, contain short vowels, but count as long because the vowels are both followed by two consonants. The third and fourth feet are spondees, the first of which is divided by the main
caesura of the verse. The fifth foot is a dactyl, as is nearly always the case. The final foot is a spondee. The dactylic hexameter was imitated in English by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his poem
Evangeline: Notice how the first line: follows this pattern: Also important in Greek and Latin poetry is the
dactylic pentameter. This was a line of verse, made up of two equal parts, each of which contains two dactyls followed by a long syllable, which counts as a half foot. In this way, the number of feet amounts to five in total. Spondees can take the place of the dactyls in the first half, but never in the second. The long syllable at the close of the first half of the verse always ends a word, giving rise to a
caesura. Dactylic pentameter is never used in isolation. Rather, a line of dactylic pentameter follows a line of dactylic hexameter in the
elegiac distich or
elegiac couplet, a form of verse that was used for the composition of elegies and other
tragic and solemn verse in the Greek and Latin world, as well as love poetry that was sometimes light and cheerful. An example from
Ovid's
Tristia: The Greeks and Romans also used a number of
lyric metres, which were typically used for shorter poems than elegiacs or hexameter. In
Aeolic verse, one important line was called the
hendecasyllabic, a line of eleven syllables. This metre was used most often in the
Sapphic stanza, named after the Greek poet
Sappho, who wrote many of her poems in the form. A hendecasyllabic is a line with a never-varying structure: two trochees, followed by a dactyl, then two more trochees. In the Sapphic
stanza, three hendecasyllabics are followed by an "Adonic" line, made up of a dactyl and a trochee. This is the form of
Catullus 51 (itself an homage to
Sappho 31): The Sapphic stanza was imitated in
English by
Algernon Charles Swinburne in a poem he simply called
Sapphics:
Classical Arabic The metrical system of Classical Arabic poetry, like those of classical Greek and Latin, is based on the weight of syllables classified as either "long" or "short". The basic principles of Arabic poetic metre are called () or (), meaning “science of poetry.” It was put forth by
Al-Farahidi (718 - 786 CE), who did so after noticing that poems consisted of repeated syllables in each verse. In his first book, '''' (), he described 15 types of verse. Al-Akhfash described one extra, the 16th. A short syllable contains a short vowel with no following consonants. For example, the word , which syllabifies as
ka-ta-ba, contains three short vowels and is made up of three short syllables. A long syllable contains either a long vowel or a short vowel followed by a consonant as is the case in the word which syllabifies as
mak-tū-bun. These are the only syllable types possible in Classical Arabic phonology which, by and large, does not allow a syllable to end in more than one consonant or a consonant to occur in the same syllable after a long vowel. In other words, syllables of the type
-āk- or
-akr- are not found in classical Arabic. Each verse consists of a certain number of metrical feet ( or ) and a certain combination of possible feet constitutes a metre (). The traditional Arabic practice for writing out a poem's metre is to use a concatenation of various derivations of the verbal root
F-ʿ-L (). Thus, the following hemistich Would be traditionally scanned as: That is, Romanised and with traditional Western scansion:
Western: ⏑ – – ⏑ – – – ⏑ – – ⏑ – ⏑ –
Verse: Mnemonic: fa`ūlun mafā`īlun fa`ūlun mafā`ilun Al-Khalīl b. Aḥmad al-Farāhīdī's contribution to the study of
Arabic prosody is undeniably significant: he was the first scholar to subject Arabic poetry to a meticulous, painstaking metrical analysis. Unfortunately, he fell short of producing a coherent theory; instead, he was content to merely gather, classify, and categorise the primary data—a first step which, though insufficient, represents no mean accomplishment. Therefore, al-Khalīl has left a formulation of utmost complexity and difficulty which requires immense effort to master; even the accomplished scholar cannot utilise and apply it with ease and total confidence. Dr. Ibrāhīm Anīs, one of the most distinguished and celebrated pillars of Arabic literature and the Arabic language in the 20th century, states the issue clearly in his book '''': I am aware of no [other] branch of Arabic studies which embodies as many [technical] terms as does [al-Khalīl’s] prosody, few and distinct as the meters are: al-Khalīl’s disciples employed a large number of infrequent items, assigning to those items certain technical denotations which—invariably—require definition and explanation. … As to the rules of metric variation, they are numerous to the extent that they defy memory and impose a taxing course of study. … In learning them, a student faces severe hardship which obscures all connection with an artistic genre—indeed, the most artistic of all—namely, poetry. … It is in this fashion that [various] authors dealt with the subject under discussion over a period of eleven centuries: none of them attempted to introduce a new approach or to simplify the rules. … Is it not time for a new, simple presentation which avoids contrivance, displays close affinity to [the art of] poetry, and perhaps renders the science of prosody palatable as well as manageable? In the 20th and the 21st centuries, numerous scholars have endeavored to supplement al-Khalīl's contribution.
The Arabic metres Classical Arabic has sixteen established metres. Though each of them allows for a certain amount of variation, their basic patterns are as follows, using: • "–" for 1 long syllable • "⏑" for 1 short syllable • "x" for a position that can contain 1 long or 1 short • "o" for a position that can contain 1 long or 2 shorts • "S" for a position that can contain 1 long, 2 shorts, or 1 long + 1 short
Classical Persian The terminology for metrical system used in classical and classical-style
Persian poetry is the same as that of Classical Arabic, even though these are quite different in both origin and structure. This has led to serious confusion among prosodists, both ancient and modern, as to the true source and nature of the Persian metres, the most obvious error being the assumption that they were copied from Arabic. Persian poetry is quantitative, and the metrical patterns are made of long and short syllables, much as in Classical Greek, Latin and Arabic.
Anceps positions in the line, however, that is places where either a long or short syllable can be used (marked "x" in the schemes below), are not found in Persian verse except in some metres at the beginning of a line. Persian poetry is written in couplets, with each half-line (hemistich) being 10-14 syllables long. Except in the
ruba'i (quatrain), where either of two very similar metres may be used, the same metre is used for every line in the poem. Rhyme is always used, sometimes with double rhyme or internal rhymes in addition. In some poems, known as
masnavi, the two halves of each couplet rhyme, with a scheme AA BB CC. In lyric poetry, the same rhyme is used throughout the poem at the end of each couplet, but except in the opening couplet, the two halves of each couplet do not rhyme; hence the scheme is AA BA CA DA. A ''ruba'i'' (quatrain) also usually has the rhyme AA BA. A particular feature of classical Persian prosody, not found in Latin, Greek or Arabic, is that instead of two lengths of syllables (long and short), there are three lengths (short, long, and overlong). Overlong syllables can be used anywhere in the line in place of a long + a short, or in the final position in a line or half line. When a metre has a pair of short syllables (⏑ ⏑), it is common for a long syllable to be substituted, especially at the end of a line or half-line. About 30 different metres are commonly used in Persian. 70% of lyric poems are written in one of the following seven metres: • ⏑ – ⏑ – ⏑ ⏑ – – ⏑ – ⏑ – ⏑ ⏑ – • – – ⏑ – ⏑ – ⏑ ⏑ – – ⏑ – ⏑ – • – ⏑ – – – ⏑ – – – ⏑ – – – ⏑ – • x ⏑ – – ⏑ ⏑ – – ⏑ ⏑ – – ⏑ ⏑ – • x ⏑ – – ⏑ – ⏑ – ⏑ ⏑ – • ⏑ – – – ⏑ – – – ⏑ – – – ⏑ – – – • – – ⏑ ⏑ – – ⏑ ⏑ – – ⏑ ⏑ – –
Masnavi poems (that is, long poems in rhyming couplets) are always written in one of the shorter 11 or 10-syllable metres (traditionally seven in number) such as the following: • ⏑ – – ⏑ – – ⏑ – – ⏑ – (e.g. Ferdowsi's
Shahnameh) • ⏑ – – – ⏑ – – – ⏑ – – (e.g. Gorgani's
Vis o Ramin) • – ⏑ – – – ⏑ – – – ⏑ – (e.g. Rumi's
Masnavi-e Ma'navi) • – – ⏑ ⏑ – ⏑ – ⏑ – – (e.g.
Nezami's
Leyli o Majnun) The two metres used for
''ruba'iyat'' (quatrains), which are only used for this, are the following, of which the second is a variant of the first: • – – ⏑ ⏑ – – ⏑ ⏑ – – ⏑ ⏑ – • – – ⏑ ⏑ – ⏑ – ⏑ – – ⏑ ⏑ –
Classical Chinese Classical Chinese poetic metric may be divided into fixed and variable length line types, although the actual scansion of the metre is complicated by various factors, including linguistic changes and variations encountered in dealing with a tradition extending over a geographically extensive regional area for a continuous time period of over some two-and-a-half millennia. Beginning with the earlier recorded forms: the
Classic of Poetry tends toward
couplets of four-character lines, grouped in rhymed quatrains; and, the
Chuci follows this to some extent, but moves toward variations in line length.
Han Dynasty poetry tended towards the variable line-length forms of the folk ballads and the
Music Bureau yuefu.
Jian'an poetry,
Six Dynasties poetry, and
Tang Dynasty poetry tend towards a poetic metre based on fixed-length lines of five, seven, (or, more rarely six) characters/verbal units tended to predominate, generally in couplet/
quatrain-based forms, of various total verse lengths. The
Song poetry is specially known for its use of the
ci, using variable line lengths which follow the specific pattern of a certain musical song's lyrics, thus
ci are sometimes referred to as "fixed-rhythm" forms.
Yuan poetry metres continued this practice with their
qu forms, similarly fixed-rhythm forms based on now obscure or perhaps completely lost original examples (or, ur-types). Not that
Classical Chinese poetry ever lost the use of the
shi forms, with their metrical patterns found in the "old style poetry" (
gushi) and the
regulated verse forms of (
lüshi or
jintishi). The regulated verse forms also prescribed patterns based upon
linguistic tonality. The use of caesura is important in regard to the metrical analysis of Classical Chinese poetry forms.
Old English The metric system of
Old English poetry was different from that of modern English, and related more to the verse forms of most of the older
Germanic languages such as
Old Norse. It used
alliterative verse, a metrical pattern involving varied numbers of syllables but a fixed number (usually four) of strong stresses in each line. The unstressed syllables were relatively unimportant, but the
caesurae (breaks between the half-lines) played a major role in
Old English poetry. In place of using feet,
alliterative verse divided each line into two
half-lines. Each half-line had to follow one of five or so patterns, each of which defined a sequence of stressed and unstressed syllables, typically with two stressed syllables per half line. Unlike typical Western poetry, however, the number of unstressed syllables could vary somewhat. For example, the common pattern "DUM-da-DUM-da" could allow between one and five unstressed syllables between the two stresses. The following is a famous example, taken from
The Battle of Maldon, a poem written shortly after the date of that battle (AD 991): In the quoted section, the stressed syllables have been underlined. (Normally, the stressed syllable must be long if followed by another syllable in a word. However, by a rule known as
syllable resolution, two short syllables in a single word are considered equal to a single long syllable. Hence, sometimes two syllables have been underlined, as in
hige and
mægen.) The German philologist
Eduard Sievers (died 1932) identified five different patterns of half-line in Anglo-Saxon alliterative poetry. The first three half-lines have the
type A pattern "DUM-da-(da-)DUM-da", while the last one has the type C pattern "da-(da-da-)DUM-DUM-da", with parentheses indicating optional unstressed syllables that have been inserted. Note also the pervasive pattern of alliteration, where the first and/or second stressed syllables alliterate with the third, but not with the fourth.
French In
French poetry, metre is determined solely by the number of syllables in a line. A silent 'e' counts as a syllable before a consonant, but is elided before a vowel (where
h aspiré counts as a consonant). At the end of a line, the "e" remains unelided but is hypermetrical (outside the count of syllables, like a feminine ending in English verse), in that case, the rhyme is also called "feminine", whereas it is called "masculine" in the other cases. The most frequently encountered metre in Classical French poetry is the
alexandrine, composed of two
hemistiches of six syllables each. Two famous alexandrines are and Classical French poetry also had a complex set of
rules for rhymes that goes beyond how words merely sound. These are usually taken into account when describing the metre of a poem.
Spanish In
Spanish poetry the metre is determined by the number of syllables the verse has. Still it is the phonetic accent in the last word of the verse that decides the final count of the line. If the accent of the final word is at the last syllable, then the poetic rule states that one syllable shall be added to the actual count of syllables in the said line, thus having a higher number of poetic syllables than the number of grammatical syllables. If the accent lies on the second to last syllable of the last word in the verse, then the final count of poetic syllables will be the same as the grammatical number of syllables. Furthermore, if the accent lies on the third to last syllable, then one syllable is subtracted from the actual count, having then less poetic syllables than grammatical syllables. Spanish poetry uses poetic licences, unique to Romance languages, to change the number of syllables by manipulating mainly the vowels in the line. Regarding these poetic licences one must consider three kinds of phenomena: (1) syneresis, (2) dieresis and (3) hiatus There are many types of licences, used either to add or subtract syllables, that may be applied when needed after taking in consideration the poetic rules of the last word. Yet all have in common that they only manipulate vowels that are close to each other and not interrupted by consonants. Some common metres in Spanish verse are: •
Septenary: A line with seven poetic syllables •
Octosyllable: A line with eight poetic syllables. This metre is commonly used in
romances, narrative poems similar to English ballads, and in most proverbs. •
Hendecasyllable: A line with eleven poetic syllables. This metre plays a similar role to pentameter in English verse. It is commonly used in sonnets, among other things. •
Alexandrine: A line consisting of fourteen syllables, commonly separated into two hemistichs of seven syllables each (In most languages, this term denotes a line of twelve or sometimes thirteen syllables, but not in Spanish).
Italian In Italian poetry, metre is determined solely by the position of the last accent in a line, the position of the other accents being however important for verse equilibrium. Syllables are enumerated with respect to a verse which ends with a
paroxytone, so that a Septenary (having seven syllables) is defined as a verse whose last accent falls on the sixth syllable: it may so contain eight syllables () or just six (). Moreover, when a word ends with a vowel and the next one starts with a vowel, they are considered to be in the same syllable (synalepha): so consists of only four syllables ("Gli an" "ni e i" "gior" "ni"). Even-syllabic verses have a fixed stress pattern. Because of the mostly
trochaic nature of the Italian language, verses with an even number of syllables are far easier to compose, and the
Novenary is usually regarded as the most difficult verse. Some common metres in Italian verse are: • Sexenary: A line whose last stressed syllable is on the fifth, with a fixed stress on the second one as well (, Giusti) •
Septenary: A line whose last stressed syllable is the sixth one. •
Octosyllable: A line whose last accent falls on the seventh syllable. More often than not, the secondary accents fall on the first, third and fifth syllable, especially in nursery rhymes for which this metre is particularly well-suited. •
Hendecasyllable: A line whose last accent falls on the tenth syllable. It therefore usually consists of eleven syllables; there are various kinds of possible accentuations. It is used in sonnets, in
ottava rima, and in many other types of poetry.
The Divine Comedy, in particular, is composed entirely of hendecasyllables, whose main stress pattern is on the 4th and 10th syllable.
Turkish Apart from Ottoman poetry, which was heavily influenced by Persian traditions and created a unique Ottoman style, traditional Turkish poetry features a system in which the number of syllables in each verse must be the same, most frequently 7, 8, 11, 14 syllables. These verses are then divided into syllable groups depending on the number of total syllables in a verse: 4+3 for 7 syllables, 4+4 or 5+3 for 8, 4+4+3 or 6+5 for 11 syllables. The end of each group in a verse is called a "durak" (stop), and must coincide with the last syllable of a word. The following example is by
Faruk Nafiz Çamlıbel (died 1973), one of the most devoted users of traditional Turkish metre: In this poem the 6+5 metre is used, so that there is a word-break (
durak="stop") after the sixth syllable of every line, as well as at the end of each line.
Ottoman Turkish In the
Ottoman Turkish language, the structures of the poetic foot ( ) and of poetic metre ( ) were imitated from Persian poetry. About twelve of the most common Persian metres were used for writing Turkish poetry. As was the case with Persian, no use at all was made of the commonest metres of Arabic poetry (the , , , and ). However, the terminology used to describe the metres was indirectly borrowed from the
Arabic poetic tradition through the medium of the
Persian language. As a result,
Ottoman poetry, also known as Dîvân poetry, was generally written in quantitative,
mora-timed metre. The
moras, or syllables, are divided into three basic types: • Open, or
light, syllables () consist of either a short
vowel alone, or a
consonant followed by a short vowel. • Examples: ("man"); ("summit, peak") • Closed, or heavy, syllables () consist of either a long vowel alone, a consonant followed by a long vowel, or a short vowel followed by a consonant • Examples: ("
Adam"); ("non-Muslim"); ("horse") • Lengthened, or superheavy, syllables () count as one closed plus one open syllable and consist of a vowel followed by a
consonant cluster, or a long vowel followed by a consonant • Examples: ("fur"); ("water") In writing out a poem's poetic metre, open syllables are symbolised by "." and closed syllables are symbolised by "–". From the different syllable types, a total of sixteen different types of poetic foot—the majority of which are either three or four syllables in length—are constructed, which are named and scanned as follows: These individual poetic feet are then combined in a number of different ways, most often with four feet per line, so as to give the poetic metre for a line of verse. Some of the most commonly used metres are the following:
Portuguese Portuguese poetry uses a syllabic metre in which the verse is classified according to the last stressed syllable. The Portuguese system is quite similar to those of Spanish and Italian, as they are closely related languages. The most commonly used verses are: • : composed of 5 syllables. • : composed of 7 syllables. •
Decasyllable (): composed of 10 syllables. Mostly used in
Parnassian sonnets. It is equivalent to the Italian
hendecasyllable. • Heroic (): stresses on the sixth and tenth syllables. •
Sapphic (): stresses on the fourth, eighth and tenth syllables. • : stresses on the third, sixth and tenth syllables. • or : stresses on the fourth, seventh and tenth syllables. •
Dodecasyllable (): composed of 12 syllables. •
Alexandrine (): divided into two
hemistiches, the sixth and the twelfth syllables are stressed. • Barbarian (): composed of 13 or more syllables. • Lucasian (): composed of 16 syllables, divided into two
hemistiches of 8 syllables each.
Welsh There is a continuing tradition of strict metre poetry in the
Welsh language that can be traced back to at least the sixth century. At the annual
National Eisteddfod of Wales the prize of a
bardic chair is awarded to the composer who has submitted for adjudication the best (long poem), collection of poems or sequence of poems, that follow(s) the conventions of regarding the arrangement within the syllabically-regulated poetic line, and between lines, of
stress,
alliteration,
rhyme and half-rhyme.
Hungarian Metre has been applied in Hungarian since 1541 up to the 20th century, partly in
hexameter, and partly in other forms, such as the
Alcaic, the
Asclepiadic, and the
Sapphic stanza. Early 19th-century poet
Dániel Berzsenyi's poetry has been rendered into English faithfully to his original metre in some translations, namely by
Peter Zollman,
Adam Makkai, and others. 20th-century poets such as
Mihály Babits,
Árpád Tóth,
Miklós Radnóti,
Attila József, and
Ágnes Nemes Nagy wrote poetry in metre. the
Odyssey, the
Aeneid and epic and lyric poetry by
Horace,
Ovid, and
Catullus, have been translated into Hungarian in their original metre, most notably by
Gábor Devecseri, as well as by other 20th-century translators. ==History==