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eye-am-bik pen-tam-uh-tuhr
Iambic pentameter
Ĭn sóoth,/Ĭ knów/nŏt whý/Ĭ ám/sŏ sád.
Ĭt wéa/riĕs mé;/yŏu sáy/ĭt wéa/riĕs yóu....
Simple sample! I feel I need a degree to get it!
Simple example
An iambic foot is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. The rhythm can be written as:da DUM!
A line of iambic pentameter is five iambic feet in a row:da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM
It's possible to notate this with a '˘'(Breve) mark representing an unstressed syllable and a '/'(Forward Slash) mark representing a stressed syllable[1]. In this notation a line of iambic pentameter would look like this:˘ / ˘ / ˘ / ˘ / ˘ /
The following line from John Keats' Ode to Autumn is a straightforward example:[2]
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
We can notate the scansion of this as follows:˘ / ˘ / ˘ / ˘ / ˘ /
To swell the gourd, and plump the ha- zel shells
We can mark the divisions between feet with a |, and the caesura (a pause) with a double vertical bar ||.˘ / ˘ / ˘ / ˘ / ˘ /
To swell | the gourd, || and plump | the ha- | zel shells
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