Old English metre Old English metre Old English metre is the conventional name given to the poetic metre in which English language poetry was composed in the Anglo-Saxon period. The best-known example of poetry composed in this verse form is "Beowulf", but the vast majority of Old English poetry belongs to the same tradition. The most salient feature of Old English poetry is its heavy use of alliteration. The basic Anglo-Saxon poetic line consists of two half-lines, connected by alliteration. This means that there is a word or syllable in the second half-line, which will alliterate with one or more important words or
Old English grammar Old English had free word order, this is not quite true, as there were conventions for the positioning of subject, object and verb in clause. Old English did not use forms equivalent to "who, when, where" in relative clauses (as in "The man whom I saw") or subordinate clauses ("When I got home, I went to sleep"). Instead, relative clauses used one of the following: Preposition-fronting ("The man with whom I spoke") did not normally occur. Subordinate clauses tended to use correlative conjunctions, e.g. The word order usually distinguished the subordinate clause (with verb-final order) from the main clause (with