Articles and Commentaries by Aden Lee, Skylark Press Studio Shelley's Skylark | Page 7

result, the stanza ends with a BB couplet (two consecutive
lines which rhyme with each other). The couplet brings a
harmonious end to the stanza and accentuates the lyricism
of the bird’s song which is described in Line 5.
The second and most important aspect of this poem’s form
is its meter. By regulating the arrangement of stressed and
unstressed syllables in each line, meter establishes a poem’s
rhythm and is considered a poem’s “heartbeat”. As a
language, English is accentual-syllabic in nature. This
means that English words are comprised of syllables which
are pronounced with varying degrees of accentual stress.
Take for example the word “happy”, which is comprised of
two syllables: “ha-” and “-ppy”. In pronouncing this word,
we would place greater stress on the first syllable than on
the second, resulting in, “HAppy”. It would sound slightly
strange if we pronounced it in a rising tone: “haPPY”.
The proper term for units of verse which contain specific
arrangements of stressed and unstressed syllables is feet.
While there are several types of feet, the two basic feet in
poetry are the Iamb (weak to strong stress) and the
Trochee (strong to weak stress). Words that conform to
an iambic pattern are pronounced with a rising tone,
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