The structured rhythm of poetry arises from a regular alternation of accented or stressed and unaccented or unstressed syllables. We can define meter in poetry as an ordered rhythm which results from a regular alternation of accented and unaccented syllable, or as they are sometimes called, stressed (long) and unstressed (short), syllables in poetry. A word may have one or more vowel sounds, e.g., “love” is one syllable word while the word “arises” contains three syllables, some of which are stressed or accented (as in singing music),- while others are unaccented or without stress on it. Everything has its measuring tool just as a mile, used for measuring distance, comprises several meters, and each meter comprises smaller units like centimeters and further into millimeters so also meter by which we determine in the rhythm of poetry, is sub-divided into several feet and each foot into a numbers of syllables.Ī syllable in English comprises one vowel sound.
