Iambic tetrameter is a

poetic meter In poetry, metre ( Commonwealth spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set o ...

ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

and

Latin poetry The history of Latin poetry can be understood as the adaptation of Greek models. The verse comedies of Plautus, the earliest surviving examples of Latin literature, are estimated to have been composed around 205-184 BC. History Scholars conven ...

; as the name of ''a rhythm'', iambic tetrameter consists of four metra, each metron being of the form , x – u – , , consisting of a

spondee A spondee (Latin: ) is a metrical foot consisting of two long syllables, as determined by syllable weight in classical meters, or two stressed syllables in modern meters. The word comes from the Greek , , 'libation'. Spondees in Ancient Greek ...

and an iamb, or two iambs. There usually is a break in the centre of the line, thus the whole line is:

,  x – u – ,  x – u – , ,  x – u – , ,  x – u – ,

("x" is a syllable that can be long or short, "–" is a long syllable, and "u" is a short one.) In modern English poetry, it refers to a line consisting of four 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 ...

. The word "

tetrameter In poetry, a tetrameter is a line of four metrical feet. The particular foot can vary, as follows: * '' Anapestic tetrameter:'' ** "And the ''sheen'' of their ''spears'' was like ''stars'' on the ''sea''" (Lord Byron, "The Destruction of Sennach ...

" simply means that there are four feet in the line; ''iambic tetrameter'' is a line comprising four iambs, defined by accent. The scheme is thus:

  x  /  x  /  x  /  x  /

Some poetic forms rely upon the iambic tetrameter, for example

triolet A triolet (, ) is almost always a stanza poem of eight lines, though stanzas with as few as seven lines and as many as nine or more have appeared in its history. Its rhyme scheme is ABaAabAB (capital letters represent lines repeated verbatim) and ...

Onegin stanza Onegin stanza (Russian: онегинская строфа ''oneginskaya strofa''), sometimes "Pushkin sonnet'' refers to the verse form popularized (or invented) by the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin through his 1825-1832 novel in verse ''Eugene O ...

, In Memoriam stanza, long measure (or

long meter Long Metre or Long Measure, abbreviated as L.M. or LM, is a poetic metre consisting of four line stanzas, or quatrains, in iambic tetrameter with alternate rhyme pattern ''a-b-a-b''. The term is also used in the closely related area of hymn metres ...

) ballad stanza.

Quantitative verse

In Medieval Latin

The term iambic tetrameter originally applied to the

quantitative meter In poetry, metre ( Commonwealth spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set o ...

of Classical Greek poetry, in which an ''iamb'' consisted of a short

syllable A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...

followed by a long syllable. Two iambs, or a spondee and an iamb, were joined together to make a "metron". In Greek and Latin iambic poetry the first syllable of each iambic metron could optionally be long instead of short. An example in Latin is the hymn

Aeterne rerum conditor ''Aeterne rerum conditor'' (English "Eternal Maker of all") is an early Christian hymn Ambrosian_hymns#Ambrosian_authorship, among those attributed to Ambrose of Milan. A dawn hymn, the hymn refers to Lucifer, the Jesus, Morning Star, Christ, fol ...

composed in the 4th century by St Ambrose, which begins:

"Eternal Creator of (all) things,
Who rulest the night and day"

The two lines above consist of the following rhythm, and joined together make a tetrameter: : , – – u – , – – u – , : , – – u – , u – u – , Latin poetry was quantitative, i.e. based on syllable length not stress accent, and in places the word-accent does not match the metrical accent (e.g. and ). In Ambrose's hymn, there is a strong break at the end of each half of the tetrameter, so that it is usual to write the two halves of the verse on separate lines.

In early Latin

The iambic tetrameter was one of the metres used in the comedies of

Plautus Titus Maccius Plautus (; c. 254 – 184 BC), commonly known as Plautus, was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest Latin literary works to have survived in their entirety. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the gen ...

and

Terence Publius Terentius Afer (; – ), better known in English as Terence (), was a Roman African playwright during the Roman Republic. His comedies were performed for the first time around 166–160 BC. Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator, brought ...

in the early period of Latin literature (2nd century BC). This kind of tetrameter is also known as the iambic octonarius, because it has eight iambic feet. There were two varieties. One had a break at the end of the second metron as in Ambrose's hymn. In some lines, however, such as the following from Terence, the break came after the 9th, not the 8th, metrical position: :! :"But you on the other hand now seem to me to be lucky, Phaedria!" :, – – uu – , – – u – , u – – – , – u – , A characteristic of iambic metre in early Latin was that even the short elements in the metre were often replaced with a long syllable, as with ''tun'' in , or two short ones, as with ''mihi'' above; but if so, they were usually unaccented to give the impression of being short. There was usually therefore quite a strong match between word accent and rhythm, as in the line above. A variation on this metre was the iambic septenarius, or iambic tetrameter

catalectic A catalectic line is a metrically incomplete line of verse, lacking a syllable at the end or ending with an incomplete foot. One form of catalexis is headlessness, where the unstressed syllable is dropped from the beginning of the line. A line ...

. This was similar but with the last syllable omitted. The example below also comes from Terence: : :But what's this? Do I see Geta running to arrive here? :, – uu – uu , – uu u – , , – – – – , u – – , The final syllable of the line could be long or short, but every final syllable counted as long by the principle known as

brevis in longo In Greek and Latin metre, ''brevis in longo'' (; ) is a short syllable at the end of a line that is counted as long. The term is short for , meaning "a short yllablein place of a long lement" Although the phenomenon itself has been known since ...

Accentual-syllabic verse

The term iambic tetrameter was adopted to describe a similar metre in

accentual-syllabic verse Accentual-syllabic verse is an extension of accentual verse which fixes both the number of stresses and syllables within a line or stanza. Accentual-syllabic verse is highly regular and therefore easily scannable. Usually, either one metrical foot, ...

, as composed in English, German, Russian, and other languages. Here, ''iamb'' refers to an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. A line of iambic tetrameter consists of four such feet in a row:

da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM

Examples

English

× / × / × / × / Come live with me and be my love (

Christopher Marlowe Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe (; baptised 26 February 156430 May 1593), was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe is among the most famous of the Elizabethan playwrights. Based upon the ...

, "

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" (1599), by Christopher Marlowe, is a pastoral poem from the English Renaissance (1485–1603). Marlowe composed the poem in iambic tetrameter (four feet of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed ...

German

× / × / × / × / Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön ( Emanuel Schikaneder, libretto to ''

The Magic Flute ''The Magic Flute'' (German: , ), K. 620, is an opera in two acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is in the form of a ''Singspiel'', a popular form during the time it was written that inclu ...

'')

Hebrew

× / × / × / × / Adon Olam Asher Malach"Master of the world who reigns". See Adon Olam. (the opening line of Adon Olam, a traditional hymn of anonymous authorship from the Jewish liturgy.)

Notes

{{Poetic meters Types of verses