ENGLISH
Ms. LeCren, La Jolla High School Name:________________________________________
Period:____ Date:______________________________
Poetry Worksheet: Rhythm
Rhythm makes a poem sound musical, more than just a statement of feelings.
CLASSWORK: Listen to the following lines from Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet:
But soft what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun....
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If you listen to the rhythm of the lines, you can almost here a beat to the words: da dum/da dum/da dum/da dum/da dum
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The rhythm you hear is called meter, and would be written like this:
Meter is a series of accented / and unaccented
syllables. One set of syllable patterns is called a foot.
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There are different kinds of rhythms. Listen to the following lines as you read them (the rhythm is named below each set of lines.)
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With falling oars they kept the time
iamb (iambic) unaccented,accented set of syllables in a foot:
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Sing thou smoothly with thy beauty
trochee (trochaic) accented,unaccented set of syllables in a foot:
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Rhythm (adj.)
iambic
trochaic
anapestic
dactylic
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And his cohorts were gleaming with purple and gold
anapest (anapestic) unaccented,unaccented,accented set of syllables in a foot:
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Pattern
Nicole
nickel
and Nicole
nickel and
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This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks
dactyl (dactylic) accented,unaccented,unaccented set of syllables in a foot: /
Once you determine what kind of feet you have in your poem, then you count how many feet you have in each line.
You can determine the metrical line by counting the number of feet.
How many iambic feet are in each of the following lines?
A book of verses underneath the bough
A jug of wine, a loaf of bread—and thou
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Rhythm (adj.) Pattern
iambic
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trochaic
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anapestic
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dactylic
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Meter
one foot line = monometer
two foot line = dimeter
three foot line = trimeter
four foot line = tetrameter
five foot line =
six foot line =
seven foot line =
eight foot line =
ASSIGNMENT:
1. Scan, then identify the meter (rhythm and metrical line) of each of the following lines.
a. And drops of crystal seemed for wantonness to weep
b. Dante once prepared to paint an angel
c. With the sheep in the fold and the cows in their stalls
d. Love again, song again, nest again, young again
e. Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, -Edgar Allan Poe
2. Write a couplet that rhymes (two lines of poetry) with the following rhythm and meter: iambic pentameter
pentameter
hexameter
heptameter
octometer