Ms.

Crandell Name_____________________________
AP English Lit Period _________
Poetry: Meter

One of the main components of poetry is its meter (the regular pattern of strong and weak stress).
To indicate changes in meter, scholars put a diagonal line ( / ) over stressed syllables. A small curving
loop ( ˘ ) goes over the unstressed syllables. Try it with the words below—it’s helpful to say them out
loud as you work. If it’s hard to hear the stressed syllables, try placing your hand under your chin as
you speak—you’ll feel your jaw dropping further on stressed syllables.

1. Marianne Moore

2. Edna St. Vincent Millay

3. How now brown cow?

4. Your Name: ___________________________________

5. Dance me to the end of love.

6. Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin.

7. Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn.

8. Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary

9. Supercallifragilisticexpealadocious!

10. Keeping time, time time,

In a sort of Runic rhyme

rhythm: the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line.

meter: the set pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry.
scansion: describing the rhythms of poetry by dividing the lines into feet, marking the locations of
stressed and unstressed syllables, and counting the syllables.

When we describe the rhythm of a poem, we “scan” it and mark the stresses (/) and absences of stress
( ˘ ) and count the number of feet. Why scan a poem? To scan a poem is to make a diagram of the
stresses and absence of stress we find in it. Studying rhythms, “scanning,” is not just a way of pointing
to syllables, it is also a matter of listening to a poem and making sense of it. To scan a poem is one
way to indicate how to read it aloud; in order to see where stresses fall, you have to see the places
where the poet wishes to put emphasis. That is why when scanning a poem you may find yourself
suddenly understanding it.

Meters to listen for:

Iambic: ˘ / (can you hear the heartbeats as you read?)
Dactylic: / ˘ ˘
Trochaic: / ˘
Anapestic: ˘ ˘ / (can you hear the hoofbeats?)

(See reverse)
(from William Wordsworth’s “The Daffodils”) Meter:

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;

(from William Blake’s “The Lamb”) Meter:

Little Lamb, who made thee?

Dost thou know who made thee?
Gave thee life, and bid thee feed
By the stream and o'er the mead;

(from The Destruction of Sennacherib by Lord Byron) Meter:

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,

And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;

And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,

When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

(from maggie and millie and molly and may by e.e. cummings) Meter:

maggie and milly and molly and may

went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang

so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star

whose rays five languid fingers were

What other meters can you find in this poem?