tetrameter
Quatrain's rhythmic backbone
Tetrameter is a line of verse with four metrical feet.
The term appears in poetry analysis, often with a modifier indicating the type of foot: iambic tetrameter, trochaic tetrameter.
It's shorter than the five-foot pentameter that dominates English poetry, giving verse a quicker, more song-like rhythm.
Verse rhythm type
- trochaicStressed-unstressed metrical pattern
- anapesticMeter with galloping rhythm
- dactylicThree-beat poetic meter
- pentameterFive-foot poetic line
hexameter · trimeter · dimeter · heptameter · foot · feet · scansion · prosody
Number after three
- feetLower limbs' ends
- lineContinuous mark or queue
- verseMetered poetic passage
- caesuraPause within a line
enjambment · half-line · stanza · couplet · quatrain · refrain · pattern · regularity
Narrative poem or song
- hymnReligious song of praise
- fourteenerPeak over 14,000 feet
- nursery rhymeTraditional poem for young children
- doggerelTrivial, clumsy verse
iambic
Verse rhythm type
- trochaicStressed-unstressed metrical pattern
- anapesticMeter with galloping rhythm
- dactylicThree-beat poetic meter
pentameter · hexameter · trimeter · dimeter · heptameter · foot · feet · scansion · prosody · stress
four
Number after three
caesura · enjambment · half-line · stanza · couplet · quatrain · refrain · pattern · regularity · symmetry
ballad
Narrative poem or song
- hymnReligious song of praise
- fourteenerPeak over 14,000 feet
- nursery rhymeTraditional poem for young children
Tennyson
Victorian English poet laureate
- LongfellowAmerican nineteenth-century poet
- PoeAmerican gothic writer's surname
- BlakeAnglo-Saxon personal name
- poetrypoem, poems, poetry, verse, verses
- poetry termspoetry, rhyme, verse, rhythm, beat
- metersthermometer, speedometer, odometer, barometer, pedometer
- poeticsrhyme, versification, poetic form, stanza, poetic devices
- rhythm termsrhythm, beat, tempo, cadence, syncopation
- tetra- wordstetrahedron, tetrapod, tetralogy, tetrachord, tetrarch
tetrameterpentameter
Five-foot poetic line
hexameter · trimeter · heptameter · dimeter · iambic pentameter