Stanza

Outline:

Every poem has a pattern, and it is the line which determines the pattern. The foot is the unit of the line; the line is the unit of the verse, or stanza; the stanza is the unit of the poem as a whole.

The shortest stanza is the couplet. As the name implies, it consists of two lines. Sometimes a couplet may form a complete poem, as, for example, this German proverb:

Away with recipes in books!
Hunger is the best of cooks!

The following lines from Milton's L’Allegro illustrate iambic tetrameter couplets, sometimes called octosyllabics:

Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson's learned sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakespeare fancy's child
Warble his native wood-notes wild,
And ever against eating cares, 5
Lap me in soft Lydian airs,
Married to immortal verse
Such as the meeting soul may pierce
In notes, with many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out. 10

The following lines from the beginning of Dryden's The Hind and the Panther are an example of iambic pentameter couplets, usually called heroic couplets:

A milk-white Hind, immortal and unchang'd,
Fed on the lawns, and in the forest rang'd;
Without unspotted, innocent within,
She fear'd no danger, for she knew no sin.
Yet had she oft been chas'd with horns and bounds
And Scythian shafts; and many winged wounds
Aim'd at her heart; was often forc'd to fly,
And doom'd to death, tho' fated not to die.

Each of the first two couplets in the Dryden passage contains a complete unit of thought; such couplets are called closed couplets.

The sense of the next couplet (the third) runs over into the following one; such a couplet is called a run-on couplet.

 Similarly a line in which a unit of thought is complete is called an end-stopped line, and a line in which the unit of thought "leaks" over into the next line or lines is called a run-on line. Another name for the "running-on" of the sense from one line to another is eniambement

The three-line stanza is sometimes called a triplet, sometimes a tercet. Many poems are written in this form, such as the Latin epigram:

Now I know everything! "so cries
The foolish youth. But when he sighs
Ali, I know nothing," he is wise

Sometimes the three-line stanza is so arranged that the first and third line of each tercet is rhymed, and the end-word of the second (unrhymed) line is carried over as the first and third rhymes of the stanza following. This stanza form is known as terza rima (literally "third rhyme"). It is the basis of and Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind," which begins:

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes! 0 thou
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The four-line stanza, or quatrain, is the most common of all verse forms. In its simplest meter (the so-called ballad stanza) only the second and fourth lines are rhymed,

Usually, however, all the lines of the quatrain are rhymed; the first line is rhymed with the third, the second with the fourth.

Another form of the quatrain in which all the lines rhyme is composed of two couplets. It rhymes in pairs (a-a-b-b),

Another quatrain form, also with all lines rhyming, is known as "enclosed rhyme" (a-b-b-a); the first and last lines seem to bracket, or enclose, the inner pair of rhymes

There are still other variations of the quatrain form, the best of which is the so-called " Omar stanza " because it was popularized by Edward FitzGerald in his Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Three of the four lines are rhymed, but not the third (a-a-x-a).

Less familiar are stanzas of five lines (cinquain or quintet), six lines (sestet), seven lines (illustrated by the rhyme royal of William Morris and John Masefield), eight lines (octave), and nine lines. The last, used frequently by John Keats and Byron, is at its best in the Spenserian stanza, so called because Spenser employed it so smoothly in "The Faerie Queen." Longer stanzas are rare; but one of them, the sonnet, has been immensely popular ever since it originated in Italy more than seven centuries ago.

Summary:

meter is the measure of rhythm in a line of poetry The smallest of the metrical units is the 'syllable'. .the largest metrical unit in the line is the 'foot', which is group of two or more syllables. There are six common kinds of feet in English metrics. IAMBIC foot, TROCHAIC foot, DACTYLIC foot ,ANAPESTIC foot, SPONDAIC foot, and PYRRHIC foot .The next largest metrical unit is the 'line' The length, or measure, of a line is called the meter.. The shortest line of poetry contains only one foot (monometer).  A line containing only one foot is called a "monometer"; one with two feet, a "dimeter" line; and so on through "trimeter", "tetrameter", "pentameter", "hexameter", "heptameter", and "octameter".(eight feet) one of the longest (octameter) consists of eight feet.