The Roman Sonnet

[L Oquence]

Follow Milo.

As to metre, it is all stress. Forget music -it is a different thing.

Here is the beginning of Coleridge's famous 'Ancient Mariner'

''It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?''

The metre goes:

It IS/ an AN/cient MAR/inER/
(And) he STOP/peth ONE/ of THREE'
'(By) thy LONG/grey BEARD/ and GLIT/tering EYE/
Now WHERE/fore STOP'ST/thou ME?/

so to give it a label, it alternates between iambic trimeter, and iambic tetrameter, that is, in English, three deDAs, and four deDAs, with the odd half foot thrown in. He keeps it up for the rest of the poem, which, in my opinion, is a must-read.

'Sarcophagus' is not a good example as people do pronounce it differently. I pronounce it with the stress on the 'O', which there makes 'sarCOPHagus'. =short long, short short.

I look forward to seeing the recast version. One final thought: try not to force rhymes - it is an absolute no-no.








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As to metre, it is all stress, as in the Ancient Mariner here:

I appreciate all this. It makes a lot more sense now. And I see, I try not to "force" rhymes. Polysyllabic rhymes are just really common in rap and it's a habit of mine in any more artful writing I do. I want to craft that tendency towards multies into a uniqueness of mine eventually, but I want to avoid forcing it obviously as well.