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 and its imperative and participle forms from "bēon". (Modern German had an analogous, but even more complicated, development for its verb "sein".) In late OE and ME, the form "earon"/"earun", from the Old Norse "erun", replaced bēoþ and sind (See also List of English words of Old Norse origin). Old English is an inflected language, and as such its nouns, pronouns, adjectives and determiners must be declined in order to serve a grammatical function. A set of declined forms of the same word pattern is called a declension. As in several other ancient Germanic languages, there are five major cases: