French alexandrine French alexandrine The French alexandrine () is a syllabic poetic meter of (nominally and typically) 12 syllables with a medial caesura dividing the line into two hemistichs (half-lines) of six syllables each. It was the dominant long line of French poetry from the 17th through the 19th century, and influenced many other European literatures which developed alexandrines of their own. According to verse historian Mikhail Gasparov, the French alexandrine developed from the Ambrosian octosyllable, by gradually losing the final two syllables, then doubling this line in a syllabic context with phrasal stress rather than length as a marker. The earliest
Poetry a rhythm. Classical Chinese poetics, based on the tone system of Middle Chinese, recognized two kinds of tones: the level (平 "píng") tone and the oblique (仄 "zè") tones, a category consisting of the rising (上 "sháng") tone, the departing (去 "qù") tone and the entering (入 "rù") tone. Certain forms of poetry placed contraints on which syllables were required to be level and which oblique. The formal patterns of meter used in Modern English verse to create rhythm no longer dominate contemporary English poetry. In the case of free verse, rhythm is often organized based on looser units of