Alliteration: also known as “head rhyme” or “initial rhyme,” is a verse form which means the repetition of the same sounds, usu. initial consonants of words or of stressed syllables in any sequence of neighboring words, e.g. “lord of language.” Alliterative verse is a verse in which the chief principle of repetition is alliteration rather than rhyme.
Epic: a long narrative poem celebrating the great deeds of one or more legendary heroes in a grand ceremonious style, who was usually protected or descended from gods, performed supernatural exploits in battle or in marvelous voyages in saving or founding a nation.
Heroic couplet:
Heroic couplet is a rhymed pair of iambic pentameter lines such as:
Let Observation with extensive View
Survey Mankind, from China to Peru (Samuel Johnson)
It is named from its use by John Dryden and others in the heroic drama of the 17th century, the heroic couplet had been established much earlier by Chaucer as a major English verse-form for narrative and other kinds of non-dramatic poetry: it dominated English poetry of the 18th century before declining in importance in the early 9th century.
Meter:
Meter refers to the pattern of measured sound-units recurring more or less regularly in lines of verse. Poetry may be composed according to one of four principal metrical systems:
▪ Quantitative meter (used in Greek and Latin): the pattern is a sequence of long and short syllables counted in groups known as feet;
▪ Syllabic meter (as in French and Japanese): the pattern comprises a fixed number of syllables in the line;
▪ Accentual meter (or “strong-stress meter”), found in Old English and in later English popular verse, the pattern is a regular number of stressed syllables in the line or group of lines, regardless of the number of unstressed syllables; and
▪ Accentual-syllabic meter: the pattern consists of a regular number of stressed syllables appropriately arranged within a fixed total number of syllables in the lines (with permissible variations including feminine endings), both stressed and unstressed syllables being counted.
The fourth system----accentual-syllabic meter----is the one found in most English verse in the literary tradition since Chaucer; some flexible uses of it incline toward the accentual system. However, the descriptive terms most commonly used to analyse it have, confusingly, been inherited from the vocabulary of the very
different Greek and Latin quantitative system. Thus the various English meters are named after the classical feet that their groupings of stressed and unstressed syllables resemble, and the length of a metrical line still often expressed in terms of the number of feet it contains: a dimeter has two feet, a trimester three, a tetrameter four, a pentameter five, a hexameter six, and a heptameter seven. A simpler and often more accurate method of description is to refer to lines either accentual or accentual-syllabic meter according to the number of syllables: thus an English tetrameter is a four-stress line, and a pentameter a five-stress line.
English accentual-syllabic meters fall into two groups, according to the way in which stressed (/) and unstressed (×)syllables alternate: in duple meters, stressed syllables alternate more or less regularly with single unstressed syllables, and so the line is traditionally described as a sequence of disyllabic (2-syllable) feet; while in triple meters, stressed syllables alternate with pairs of unstressed syllables, and the line is seen as a sequence of trisyllabic (3-syllable) feet. Of the two duple meters, by far the more common in English is the iambic meter, in which the stressed syllables are for the most part perceived as following the unstressed syllables with which they alternate (×/×/×/ etc.) although some variations on this pattern are accepted. The other duple meter, used in English less frequently than the iambic, is the trochaic meter, in which the iambic pattern is reversed so that the stressed syllables are felt to be preceding the unstressed syllables with which they alternate (/×/×/×, etc.). It is common, though, for poets using trochaic meter to begin and end the line on a stressed syllable, as in Blake’s line:
Tiger, tiger, burning bright The triple meters are far less common in English, although sometimes found. In the dactylic meter, named after the dactyl (/××), the stressed syllables are felt to precede the intervening pairs of unstressed syllables: Cannon in front of them (Tennyson: dactylic dimeter)
In the anapaestic meter, named after the anapaest (××/), the pattern is reversed:
Of your painting, dispirited race (Arnold: anapaestic trimester)
Dactylic and anapaestic verse is not usually composed purely of dactyls and anapaests: other feet or additional syllables are frequently combined with or substituted for them.
Rhyme:
Rhyme means the identity of sound between syllables or paired groups of syllables, usually at the ends of verse lines. Normally the last stressed vowel in the line and all sounds following it make up the rhyming element: this may be a monosyllable (love / above ---- known as “masculine rhyme”), or two syllables (whether / together ---- known as “feminine rhyme” or double rhyme), or even three syllables (glamorous / amorous, known as “triple rhyme”). These rhymes
are all examples of “full rhyme” (or “true rhyme”). Departures from this norm take three forms: (i) rime rhyme, in which the consonants preceding the rhyming elements are also identical even if the spellings and meanings of the words differ (made / maid); (ii) eye rhyme, in which the spellings of the rhyming elements match, but the sounds do not (love / prove); and (iii) half-rhyme or “slant rhyme,” where the vowel sounds do not match ( love / have, or with rich consonance, love / leave). Half-rhyme is known by several other names: imperfect rhyme, near rhyme, etc. Although rhyme is most often used at the ends of verse lines, internal rhyme between syllables within the same line is also found. In English rhyme finally replaced alliteration (also known as “head rhyme” or “initial rhyme”: the repetition of the same sounds ---- usually initial consonants of words or of stressed syllables ---- in any sequence of neighboring word as in “lord of language”) as the usual patterning device of verse only in the late 14th century.
Rhyme scheme: Rhyme scheme refers to the pattern in which the rhymed line-endings are arranged in a poem or stanza. This may be expressed as a sequence of recurrences in which each line ending on the same rhyme is given the same alphabetical symbol, such as aabb ccdd, etc. Rhyme schemes may follow a fixed pattern, as in the sonnet and several other forms, or they may be arranged freely according to the poet’s requirements.
