iambic verse
da-DUM rhythmic lines
Iambic verse is poetry written in iambs—metrical units of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one (da-DUM).
English naturally falls into iambic patterns, making it the dominant meter in the language.
Iambic pentameter, with five iambs per line, is the meter of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
- stressed syllableEmphasized unit of speech
- Elizabethan poetryLate 1500s English verse
- sonnetFourteen-line metered poem
- Shakespearean sonnetFourteen-line poem, ABAB pattern
- English sonnetFourteen lines, ABAB pattern
poetic tradition · heroic couplet · rhyme scheme · stress pattern · trochee · anapest · spondee · pyrrhic · Renaissance literature · foot · ten syllables · scansion · caesura · literary canon · pentameter · poetic meter · dactyl · prosody
- poetic metertrochee, dactyl, spondee, anapest, trochaic
- verse formshaiku, couplet, limerick, quatrain, sonnet
- Byzantine poetrykontakion, court poetry
- Greek epigramsepigram, epigrams, Leonidas, epitaph, epitaphs
- Greek poetryHomer, Sappho, Iliad, Odyssey, hymns
- Horacecarpe diem, Augustus, golden mean, lyric poetry, Augustan age