As one who is completely tone deaf, cannot hum even the simplest nursery ryhme in tune, and has absolutely no sense of rythm - I cannot grasp greek poetics meters in the slightest.
Anyway, I memorized the following english poem: Lepanto, by GK Chesterton. The poem is kind of epic like, and definitely seems to have a meter and rythm of some sort. If someone would care to take a peek, is there anything in the meter of this poem that is similar to greek?
English formal verse is based on word stress and rhyme. Greek verse is based on rhythmic patters of long and short syllables. So even though we use Greek terminology to describe English meters, there’s no meaningful relationship between them.
You get rythm when you repeat sounds in a pattern. If you make one soft tap on your desktop, you ain’t got rythm. If you make a strong tap on your desktop, you ain’t got rythm either. If you make a succession of aleatory soft and strong taps, likewise. If you make a pattern, like tap-tap-TAP and repeat it over time you’ve got rythm:
tap-tap-TAP — tap-tap-TAP — tap-tap-TAP …
or
tap-TAP —tap-TAP — tap-TAP …
or
TAP-tap-tap — TAP-tap-tap — TAP-tap-tap …
In poetry, those patterns are called metrical feet. In English poetry, the soft taps are unstressed syllables, and the strong taps are stressed syllables. In Classical Greek poetry, the soft taps are short syllables, and the strong taps are long syllables. (I beg forgiveness from our erudites for my simplism.)
(A few English poets have used the short/long pattern, but let’s not get into that.)
“Lepanto’s” meter is tap-tap-TAP (unstressed-unstressed-STRESSED). That foot is called an anapest. There’s four anapests on each line, so “Lepanto” is written in anapestic tetrameters (tetra means four in Greek, and a tetrameter is a line consisting of four feet).
Greek poetry written in anapestic tetrameters would consist of lines with 4 feet each, and each foot would be short-short-long. (By long and short we mean the length in time of their vowels: pit would be a short syllable, and Pete a long one.)
Note that poets like to add some spice to their lines, so not all of Chesterton’s feet are anapests. ‘White founts’ is a spondee (STRESSED-STRESSED),and ‘falling’ is a trochee (STRESSED-unstressed), so his first line’s four feet are (spondee)(trochee)(anapest)(anapest):
(WHITE-FOUNTS) (FAL-ling) (in-the-COURTS) (of-the-SUN)
I notice that many of “Lepanto’s” feet have an extra unstressed syllable, so they sound tap-tap-tap-TAP. If you read just one line with many variations out of context, the anapestic rythm is not very apparent, but when you read several lines together the rythm jumps out.
Not that you need metrical feet to put rythm in poetry, mind you. In Italian, Portuguese and Spanish poetry you use syllable count. Just by making every line have the same number of syllables you create rythm as long as the lines are short enough (and as long as you don’t enjamb too much). Lines over 8 syllables long need a pattern of stressed syllables to be rythmic. The most popular long line in Italian, Portuguese and Spanish poetry is the hendecasyllable (11 syllables); and those always have either the 6th and the 10th syllables stressed, or the 4th, the 8th and the 10th stressed. The rest can be either stressed or unstressed, but because the rule of thumb says that you don’t put stressed syllables next to each other, hendecasyllables end up being almost identical to iambic pentameters. Most of Petrarch’s hendecasyllables could be considered iambic pentameters, and most of Shakespeare’s iambic pentameters could be considered hendecasyllables.
Thanks a lot, I really appreciate the thoughtful and informative answers -
so - for lines 5 and 6 - if they followed the regular pattern of (Anapest)(Anapest)… you would get
(it curls THE) (blood red CRES) (cent, the CRES)( scent of HIS) lips
(for the IN)-(most sea OF) (all the EARTH) (is shakEN) ( with his SHIPS)
But then you would end up with 4 feet in line 5 and an extra word, and 5 feet in line 6.
Do these lines have 5 feet, or do syllables need to be squished together into a single unit?
If the number of syllables in the sentence can be divided into three with no remainder then the line has to consist of only dactyls and anapests?
Out of curiosity, is there a document that shows the complete metrical layout of the illiad?
“[What about lines 5 and 6?]” ~JauneFlammee
You caught me with my lyrical pants down, Jaune. I’m not sure how I can dig myself out of the hole, but I’ll try:
All poetry (good poetry, that is) is rythmic; that includes free verse.
It is pointless to take a poem written in free verse and say “line 1 has three iambs two dactyls and two trochees, line 2 has two spondees a trochee and an anapest…” because there isn’t a repeated pattern.
“Lepanto” shouldn’t be used as a clear example of metrical poetry, even though the four anapests per line are repeated enough to say that it is a poem written in anapestic tetrameters.
If a poem is written in anapestic tetrameters, for example, every foot that is not an anapest is called a substitution.
In line 1 of “Lepanto” you have two clear anapests and two substitutions, and those are enough anapests to still call that line an anapestic tetrameter.
I don’t see enough anapests on lines 5 and 6 to call those lines anapestic tetrameters. Saying that the lines are tetrameters with five substitutions would be foolish. If you forced me to find four feet on lines 5 and 6, I’d scan them like this:
(It-CURLS)(the-blood-red-CRES)(cent-the-CRES)(cent-of-his-LIPS);
(for-the-IN)(most-sea-of-ALL)(the-earth-is-SHA)(ken-with-his-SHIPS).
(I would usually say that ‘blood’, ‘red’, ‘sea’ and ‘earth’ are stressed.)
Scanning English verse is not an exact science, so I could say that line 5 starts with two iambs and a spondee, and someone else could say that it starts with an amphibrach, a spondee and a trochee. Also many one-syllable words can be considered stressed by some and unstressed by others, depending on the context.
The only repeated pattern I see in lines 5 and 6 (other than the rhyme, which is another form of creating rythm) is “the-CRES-cent-of-his-LIPS/is-SHA-ken-with-his-SHIPS”.
My conclusion is that Chesterton had Walt Whitman as one of his masters and sprinkled his poem with some free verse.
In other words: I don’t know.
Note that when you tried to scan lines 5 and 6 you marked as stressed words that are always unstressed, like 'the' and 'of'; and marked 'shaken' as having its stress on the second syllable. Meter is always subject to actual spoken language, not the other way around. No matter how you end up scanning your lines, you should always say your poetry naturally, and if the rythm is there it will pop out without any special effort on your part.
_"If the number of syllables in the sentence [line] can be divided into three with no remainder then the line has to consist of only dactyls and anapests?"_
Not neccesarily. It could have a two-beat foot and three anapests, with one of those anapests having an extra unstressed syllable (I don't know if there's a name for those). Lines 2 and 3 are full of superanapests:
(and-the-SOL)([u]dan-of-by-ZAN[/u])(tium-is-SMI)([u]ling-as-they-RUN[/u]);
(there-is-LAUGH)([u]ter-like-the-FOUN[/u])([u]tains-in-that-FACE[/u])([u]of-all-men FEARED[/u]),“Out of curiosity, is there a document that shows the complete metrical layout of ‘The Iliad’?”
We were saving that job for you, Psilord. 
Bardo de Saldo,
Thanks a lot, I wasn’t trying to trap you - just trying to figure it out. Incidently, I have an audio recording of a reading of the poem (presumable read by a proffesional) and the same parts were stressed exactly as you layed out in scanning lines 1 through 6 - (even lines 5 and 6 ). Great Job and thanks again.
For some reason, when saying the poem I have little problem getting the stress right - but as soon as my brain starts to think about it everything is lost. Apparently those two parts of my brain are completely disconnected.
Thanks, Jaune, that made me feel better.
One last thing to mention on the subject: When Robert Frost writes this line:
Little–less–nothing!And that ended it
and says that it is an iambic pentameter, critics bend over backwards to find the iambs, and Professors write endless discertations on Frost’s mastery of iambic variations; whereas if you perpetrated that line and called it an iambic pentameter folks would say that you’re on crack.
So, if Chesterton said (I don’t know that he did) that lines 5 and 6 are anapestic tetrameters they are, period.
When one of Shakespeare’s “iambic pentameter” lines has an 11th syllable (6th unstressed syllable), it’s called a “feminine ending”. Feminine endings almost never occur in the Sonnets, and a spew of feminine endings indicate that a character is either highly distressed or not quite sane.
Oooh, I didn’t know that. Very interesting.
Let’s rephrase it this way, Glott:
Most of Shakespeare’s iambic pentameters with masculine endings (10-syllable count) could be considered hendecasyllables.
Femenine endings indicate that the last word in the line is stressed on its second-to-last syllable.