Iambic Verse

Iambic Verse, a term applied, in classic prosody, and sometimes in English, to verses consisting of the foot or metre called Iambus, consisting of two syllables, of which the first is short, and the second long (◡ -). Archiloachus (q.v.) is the reputed inventor of iambic verse. The English language runs more easily and naturally in this metre than in any other. Thus, our usual blank-verse line consists of five iambs, while we have also such combinations of continuous rhyming metres in iambic measure as tetrasyllabics; lines of six syllables and three accents (Skeltonical verse); octosyllabics, as in most of the old romances, Hudibras, Lalla Rookh, and most of Scott's and Byron's romantic poems, except Lara and the Corsair; decasyllabics, with five accents, which when rhyming in couplets forms our so-called heroic metre; and Alexandrines, or twelve-syllable metre with six accents, as in Drayton's Polyolbion. See METRE.