A line of poetry, as the name suggests, is a line of poetry, and a line of poetry is not necessarily a complete sentence. The length of a line of poetry is measured by the number of steps.
Quotation examples
1. The first letter of each line of English poetry is capitalized, but a line of poetry may not be a complete sentence or express a complete meaning. . Sometimes, a line of poetry is just one sentence, and sometimes it takes two or even many lines to form a complete sentence. The former is called end-stopped line, and the latter is called run-on line. (cross-line sentence).
This is one of the biggest differences between English poetry and Chinese poetry. Chinese poetry expresses a complete meaning in one line. Look at the following verse:
I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.
The first two lines are end-stopped lines, and the last two lines are run-on lines. When reading poems that span lines, the pause at the end of the line should be short.
Straddle sentences are extremely common in English poetry, and sometimes it takes more than ten lines to form a complete sentence.
2. The length of a poem line is calculated by the number of steps: the length range of English poem lines is generally one meter - pentameter. There are also lines in six, seven and eight meter, but not many. Most of them are poems in tetrameter and pentameter.
(Special terms for various long and short lines of poetry: monometer: monometer dimeter: dimeter trimeter: trimeter tetrameter: tetrameter pentameter: pentameter hexameter : hexameter: heptameter: heptameter: octameter.)
When analyzing the rhythm of a poem, it is necessary to consider not only the basic meter type of the poem, but also the rhythm of the poem. The number of steps in the line of poetry. Look at the short poem below:
An EMPTY HOUSE
Alexander Pope
You beat│your pate, │and fan│cy wit │will come:
Knock as│you please, │there's no│body│at home.
(You pat your head, thinking that inspiration will come soon. But no matter how you knock, there is no one. Open the door. pate, head, fancy, verb: think, imagine)
The basic meter type of this poem is iambic pentameter. Therefore, the meter of this poem is called "iambic pentameter". The meter type of a poem and the number of steps contained in the lines constitute the meter of the poem.