poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...

, a fourteener is a line consisting of 14 syllables, which are usually made of seven iambic

feet The foot ( : feet) is an anatomical structure found in many vertebrates. It is the terminal portion of a limb which bears weight and allows locomotion. In many animals with feet, the foot is a separate organ at the terminal part of the leg made ...

, for which the style is also called iambic

heptameter Heptameter is a type of meter where each line of verse contains seven metrical feet.Harmon, William, and Hugh Holman. ''A Handbook to Literature.'' Eleventh ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson-Prentice Hall, 2009. 264. It was used frequently in Cl ...

. It is most commonly found in

English poetry This article focuses on poetry from the United Kingdom written in the English language. The article does not cover poetry from other countries where the English language is spoken, including Republican Ireland after December 1922. The earliest ...

produced in the 16th and 17th centuries. Fourteeners often appear as rhymed couplets, in which case they may be seen as

ballad stanza In poetry, a ballad stanza is a type of a four-line stanza, known as a quatrain, most often found in the folk ballad. The ballad stanza consists of a total of four lines, with the first and third lines written in the iambic tetrameter and the secon ...

or common metre

hymn A hymn is a type of song, and partially synonymous with devotional song, specifically written for the purpose of adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification. The word ''hymn'' ...

quatrains in two rather than four lines. The term may also be used as a synonym for quatorzain, a 14-line poem, such as a

sonnet A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's invention, ...

Background

Poulter's measure is a meter consisting of alternate

Alexandrine Alexandrine is a name used for several distinct types of verse line with related metrical structures, most of which are ultimately derived from the classical French alexandrine. The line's name derives from its use in the Medieval French ''Roman ...

s combined with Fourteeners, to form a poem of 12 and 14 syllable lines. It was often used in the

Elizabethan era The Elizabethan era is the epoch in the Tudor period of the history of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603). Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history. The symbol of Britannia (a female personifi ...

. The term was coined by

George Gascoigne George Gascoigne (c. 15357 October 1577) was an English poet, soldier and unsuccessful courtier. He is considered the most important poet of the early Elizabethan era, following Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey and leading to t ...

, because poulters, or poulterers (sellers of

poultry Poultry () are domesticated birds kept by humans for their eggs, their meat or their feathers. These birds are most typically members of the superorder Galloanserae (fowl), especially the order Galliformes (which includes chickens, quails, a ...

), would sometimes give 12 to the dozen, and other times 14 (see also

Baker's dozen A dozen (commonly abbreviated doz or dz) is a grouping of twelve. The dozen may be one of the earliest primitive integer groupings, perhaps because there are approximately a dozen cycles of the Moon, or months, in a cycle of the Sun, or yea ...

). When the poulter's measure couplet is divided at its

caesura image:Music-caesura.svg, 300px, An example of a caesura in modern western music notation A caesura (, . caesuras or caesurae; Latin for "cutting"), also written cæsura and cesura, is a Metre (poetry), metrical pause or break in a Verse (poetry), ...

e, it becomes a short measure stanza, a quatrain of 3, 3, 4, and 3 feet. Examples of this form are

Nicholas Grimald Nicholas Grimald (or Grimoald) (1519–1562) was an English poet and dramatist. Life Nicholas Grimald was born to a modest yeoman family of farmers in 1519–20. His parents are unknown, despite the popular belief that his father was Giovanni B ...

's ''A Truelove''; Lord Brooke's ''Epitaph on Sir Phillip Sydney'';

Nicholas Breton Nicholas Breton (also Britton or Brittaine) (c. 1545/53 – c. 1625/6) was a poet and prose writer of the English Renaissance. Life Nicholas belonged to an old family settled at Layer Breton, Essex. His father, William Breton, a London merchant ...

's ''Phyllis'' in the Oxford Book of Sixteenth Century Verse. In the early 17th century,

George Chapman George Chapman (Hitchin, Hertfordshire, – London, 12 May 1634) was an English dramatist, translator and poet. He was a classical scholar whose work shows the influence of Stoicism. Chapman has been speculated to be the Rival Poet of Shak ...

famously used the fourteener when he produced one of the first

English translations of Homer Translators and scholars have translated the main works attributed to Homer, the ''Iliad'' and ''Odyssey'', from the Homeric Greek into English since the 16th and 17th centuries. Translations are ordered chronologically by date of first publicatio ...

's ''

Iliad The ''Iliad'' (; grc, Ἰλιάς, Iliás, ; "a poem about Ilium") is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the ''Odysse ...

''. Two centuries later, in his "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer,"

John Keats John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tuberculo ...

expressed his appreciation for what he called the "loud and bold" quality of Chapman's translation, which he implicitly contrasted with the more prestigious but more tightly controlled

heroic couplet A heroic couplet is a traditional form for English poetry, commonly used in epic and narrative poetry, and consisting of a rhyming pair of lines in iambic pentameter. Use of the heroic couplet was pioneered by Geoffrey Chaucer in the ''Legend of ...

s of

Alexander Pope Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 O.S. – 30 May 1744) was an English poet, translator, and satirist of the Enlightenment era who is considered one of the most prominent English poets of the early 18th century. An exponent of Augustan literature, ...

's 18th-century translation, thereby using one type of fourteener (a sonnet) to comment on the other (iambic heptameter).

Samuel Johnson Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The ''Oxford ...

in his ''Lives of The English Poets'' comments upon the importance of fourteeners to later English lyric forms saying "as these lines had their

always at the eighth syllable, it was thought in time commodious to divide them; and quatrains of lines alternately consisting of eight and six syllables make the most soft and pleasing of our lyric measures". These quatrains of eight and six syllables (or more loosely, lines of 4, 3, 4, and 3 beats) are known as

common meter Common metre or common measure—abbreviated as C. M. or CM—is a poetic metre consisting of four lines that alternate between iambic tetrameter (four metrical feet per line) and iambic trimeter (three metrical feet per line), with each foot cons ...

C. S. Lewis Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963) was a British writer and Anglican lay theologian. He held academic positions in English literature at both Oxford University (Magdalen College, 1925–1954) and Cambridge Univers ...

, in his ''English Literature in the Sixteenth Century'', castigates the 'lumbering' poulter's measure (p. 109). He attributes the introduction of this 'terrible' meter to Thomas Wyatt (p. 224). In a more extended analysis (pp. 231–2), he comments:

The medial break in the alexandrine, though it may do well enough in French, becomes intolerable in a language with such a tyrannous stress-accent as ours: the line struts. The fourteener has a much pleasanter movement, but a totally different one: the line dances a jig.

The poets Surrey, Tuberville, Gascoigne, Balassone, Golding and others all used the Poulter's Measure, the rhyming fourteener with authority.Schmidt, Michael, ''Lives of the Poets'' Weidenfeld & Nicolson, The Orion Publishing Group, 1998

Illustrations

William Blake William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. ...

used lines of fourteen syllables, for example in ''

The Book of Thel ''The Book of Thel'' is a poem by William Blake, dated 1789 and probably composed in the period 1788 to 1790. It is illustrated by his own plates, and compared to his later prophetic books is relatively short and easier to understand. The metre ...

''. These lines, however, are not written in iambic heptameter. *Four of the poems included by

J.R.R. Tolkien John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (, ; 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings''. From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the Rawlins ...

The Lord of the Rings ''The Lord of the Rings'' is an epic high-fantasy novel by English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. Set in Middle-earth, intended to be Earth at some time in the distant past, the story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 children's boo ...

are written in fourteeners: " Galadriel's Song of Eldamar," in the chapter "Farewell to Lórien"; the "Lament for Boromir" in the chapter "The Departure of Boromir"; and two in the chapter "Treebeard" -- Treebeard's song of "The Ent and the Entwife"; and the lament of the Ent Quickbeam for his rowan trees. The last of these features internal rhyme. *Queen Marina of the video game

Dragon Quest XI ''Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age'' is a role-playing video game by Square Enix. The eleventh entry in the long-running ''Dragon Quest'' video game series, it was released in Japan for the Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation 4 in July 2017 an ...

speaks exclusively in fourteeners. *The Gravemind from the Halo Trilogy also speaks in fourteeners. *The seventh song of

Philip Sidney Philip, also Phillip, is a male given name, derived from the Greek language, Greek (''Philippos'', lit. "horse-loving" or "fond of horses"), from a compound of (''philos'', "dear", "loved", "loving") and (''hippos'', "horse"). Prominent Philip ...

's '' Astrophel and Stella'' is written in rhyming fourteener couplets: :Who have so leaden eyes, as not to see sweet beauty's show, :Or seeing, have so wooden wits, as not that worth to know? *Sidney's friend, the translator

Arthur Golding Arthur Golding (May 1606) was an English translator of more than 30 works from Latin into English. While primarily remembered today for his translation of Ovid's ''Metamorphoses'' because of its influence on William Shakespeare's works, in his ...

, was extremely fond of fourteeners: :Now have I brought a work to end which neither Jove's fierce wrath, :Nor sword, nor fire, nor fretting age with all the force it hath :Are able to abolish quite. Let come that fatal hour :Which (saving of this brittle flesh) hath over me no power, :And at his pleasure make an end of mine uncertain time. :Yet shall the better part of me assured be to climb :Aloft above the starry sky. And all the world shall never :Be able for to quench my name. For look how far so ever :The Roman empire by the right of conquest shall extend, :So far shall all folk read this work. And time without all end :(If poets as by prophecy about the truth may aim) :My life shall everlastingly be lengthened still by fame. (

Ovid Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the th ...

, ''

Metamorphoses The ''Metamorphoses'' ( la, Metamorphōsēs, from grc, μεταμορφώσεις: "Transformations") is a Latin narrative poem from 8 CE by the Roman poet Ovid. It is considered his ''magnum opus''. The poem chronicles the history of the wo ...

'' 15.984-95, tr. Golding) *The theme to

Gilligan's Island ''Gilligan's Island'' is an American sitcom created and produced by Sherwood Schwartz. The show's ensemble cast features Bob Denver, Alan Hale Jr., Jim Backus, Natalie Schafer, Tina Louise, Russell Johnson and Dawn Wells. It aired for thr ...

is largely composed in iambic heptameter: :Just sit right back and (you'll) hear a tale, a tale of (a) fateful trip :That started from this tropic port, aboard this tiny ship. *The children’s book ''Giraffes Can’t Dance'' by Giles Andreae is entirely composed in iambic heptameter: :Listen to the swaying grass and listen to the trees :To me the sweetest music is the branches in the breeze *Graeme Base's ''The Sign of the Seahorse'' is entirely in iambic heptameter, the first lines being: :Above the ragged reefs they soared, exquisite and serene, :Through slanting shafts of sunlight, tiny jewels of blue and green." * Ernest Thayer's popular "

Casey at the Bat Casey at the Bat is a poem written in 1888 by Ernest Thayer. Casey at the Bat may also refer to: * ''Casey at the Bat'' (1916 film), a film based on the poem * ''Casey at the Bat'' (1927 film), a film based on the poem * ''Casey at the Bat'', a ...

" (1888): :The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville Nine that day; :The score stood four to two, with but one inning more to play, :And then when Cooney died at first, and Barrows did the same, :A sickly silence fell upon the patrons of the game. * Robert Southwell's most famous poem "The Burning Babe" is in rhyming fourteeners: :As I in heavey winter's night stood shivering in the snow, :Surprised I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow. *

A Tribe Called Quest A Tribe Called Quest was an American hip hop group formed in Queens, New York City, in 1985,Q-Tip

's song "Lyrics to Go" is constructed largely around fourteeners: :I know it's been two years but see the Tribe was never falling :Would have tried for singing but that stuff was not my calling :The mic is in effect so you know I'm never stalling :Walking through the door and all them suckers started hauling

Poulter's measure

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516/1517 – 19 January 1547), Order of the Garter, KG, was an English nobleman, politician and poet. He was one of the founders of English Renaissance poetry and was the last known person executed at the instan ...

's "Complaint of the Absence of her lover, being upon the sea" (1547) is in Poulter's measure: :Good ladies, ye that have your pleasure in exile :Step in your foot, come take a place, and mourn with me awhile, :And such as by their lord do set but little price :Let them sit still, it skills them not what chance come on the dice.

References

External links

*Examples of Poulter's Measure of Thomas Wyatt and other

{{Poetic meters Poetic rhythm Sonnet studies