The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking The Poet Within

The Iambic Pentameter

The rising rhythm of the five-beat iambic pentameter has been since the fourteenth century the most widely used metre in English poetry. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Spenser’s Faerie Queen, Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets, Milton’s Paradise Lost, the preponderance of verse by Dryden, Pope, Wordsworth, Keats, Browning, Tennyson, Owen, Yeats and Frost, all written in iambic pentameter. It is the very breath of English verse and has earned the title the HEROIC LINE.

Poetry Exercise 1

Try reading the following extracts out loud to yourself, noting the varying pulses, some strong and regularly accented, others gentler and more flowing. Each pair of lines is an example of ‘perfect’ iambic pentameter, having exactly ten syllables, five iambic feet (five stresses on the even-numbered beats) to the line. Once you’ve read each pair a few times, TAKE A PENCIL AND MARK UP EACH FOOT. Use a or a / for the accented syllables or words and a or a–for the un accented syllables or word. I have double-spaced each pair to make it easier for you to mark them.

I really would urge you to take time over these: savour every line. Remember GOLDEN RULE ONE–reading verse can be like eating chocolate, so much more pleasurable when you allow it slowly to melt inside you, so much less rewarding when you snap off big chunks and bolt them whole, all but untasted.

DON’T LET YOUR EYE FALL FURTHER DOWN THE PAGE THAN THIS LINE until you have taken out your pencil or pen. You may prefer a pencil so that you can rub out your marks and leave this book in pristine condition when you lend it to someone else–naturally the publishers would prefer you to buy another copy for your friends–the important thing is to get used to defacing this book in one way or another. Here are the rules of the exercise again:

Read each pair of lines out loud, noting the ti-tum rhythms.

Now MARK the weak/strong (accented/unaccented) syllables and the ‘bar lines’ that separate each foot in this manner:

Or you may find it easier with a pencil to do it like this:

When you have done this, read each pair of lines OUT LOUD once more, exaggerating the stresses on each beat.He sit hym up withouten wordes mo,And with his ax he smoot the corde atwo,⁴

CHAUCER: The Canterbury Tales, The Reeve’s TaleThat time of year, thou mayst in me beholdWhen yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

SHAKESPEARE: Sonnet 73In sooth I know not why I am so sad:It wearies me; you say it wearies you;

SHAKESPEARE: The Merchant of Venice, Act I, Scene 1Their wand’ring course, now high, now low, then hidProgressive, retrograde, or standing still

MILTON: Paradise Lost, Book VIIIOft has our poet wisht, this happy SeatMight prove his fading Muse’s last retreat.

DRYDEN: ‘Epilogue to Oxford’And, spite of Pride, in erring Reason’s spite,One truth is clear, ‘Whatever is, is right.’

POPE: An Essay on Man, Epistle 1And thus they formed a group that’s quite antique,Half naked, loving, natural, and Greek.

BYRON: Don Juan, Canto II, CXCIVNow fades the glimm’ring landscape on the sightAnd all the air a solemn stillness holds.

GRAY: ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’And certain hopes are with me, that to theeThis labour will be welcome, honoured Friend!

WORDSWORTH: The Prelude, Book OneSt Agnes’ Eve–Ah, bitter chill it was!The owl for all his feathers was a-cold;

KEATS: ‘The Eve of St Agnes’The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,The vapours weep their burthen to the ground

TENNYSON: ‘Tithonus’If you could hear, at every jolt, the bloodCome gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs

WILFRED OWEN: ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’When you are old and grey and full of sleepAnd nodding by the fire, take down this book

W. B. YEATS: ‘When You Are Old’And death is better, as the millions know,Than dandruff, night-starvation, or B.O.

W. H. AUDEN: ‘Letter to Lord Byron’, IIHe’s worn out. He’s asleep beside the stove.When I came up from Rowe’s I found him here,

ROBERT FROST: ‘The Death of the Hired Man’Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drillsWe trekked and picked until the cans were full,

SEAMUS HEANEY: ‘Blackberry Picking’And praised his wife for every meal she made.And once, for laughing, punched her in the face.

SIMON ARMITAGE: ‘Poem’

Nearly seven hundred years of iambic pentameter represented there. Marking the beats is not a supremely challenging exercise, but remains a good way of becoming more familiar with the nature of the line and its five regular accents.

Having marked the couplets up, now GO BACK AND READ THEM, either out loud or to yourself. Simply relish them as if you were tasting wine.