Poem Meter Analyzer

How to Use the Poem Meter Analyzer

1. Enter the poem. Paste it with one line of verse per line, or press one of the public-domain samples. Blank lines are ignored.
2. Let it detect the metre, or fix one. Leave Foot and Feet per line on automatic to find the closest fit, or choose, say, iambic and pentameter to test a poem against what you were told it is.
3. Read the summary. The headline names the metre, and the cards give the average fit, how many lines fit, and a confidence rating. A low rating means a different reading is nearly as good.
4. Go through the lines. Each word is drawn with a mark for every syllable. Rose marks a syllable against the pattern; amber marks a stressed one-syllable word on a weak beat, which verse does all the time.

How the Scansion Works

Scansion marks which syllables of a line are stressed. The stress comes from the Carnegie Mellon University Pronouncing Dictionary, which gives each syllable of a word a digit for primary, secondary or no stress. That is lexical stress — how the word is said alone — and a poem puts it to work in a rhythm.

One-syllable words need special handling, and the tool is open about it. The dictionary writes to as stressed and the as unstressed, but in speech either can fall on a beat or off it. So one-syllable function words — articles, prepositions, conjunctions, pronouns, auxiliaries — are treated as flexible, marked ×, and fit any beat at no cost, or at a small cost when they take a strong beat. Other one-syllable words, such as night or love, keep their stress but may sit on a weak beat at a smaller cost, because verse often demotes them. Polysyllabic words are the hard evidence: a stressed syllable on a weak beat, or an unstressed one on a strong beat, is a real mismatch.

Each line is then fitted to every candidate metre — iambic, trochaic, anapestic and dactylic, from one to eight feet — allowing the variations that do not change a metre: a feminine ending, a catalectic (cut-short) line, a headless start. The metre with the lowest total cost over the poem is the dominant one. A line's fit is 100% minus its mismatch cost as a share of its syllables, so one inverted foot in a ten-syllable line costs about 20 points.

A Worked Example

Take the first four lines of Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 (1609): Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? / Thou art more lovely and more temperate: / Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, / And summer's lease hath all too short a date. The analyzer reports iambic pentameter, an average fit of about 95%, and all four lines fitting, each between 94% and 98%. The one substitution it names is in line three, where Rough winds are two stressed syllables, a spondee, in the place of an iamb.

Blake's The Tiger (1794) is the contrast: Tiger, tiger, burning bright / In the forests of the night. The analyzer reads trochaic tetrameter, catalectic — four feet that begin on the stress, with the last unstressed syllable dropped, so the first two lines end on bright and night. The fourth line, Could frame thy fearful symmetry?, fits worst at 83%: it opens on a weak beat and ends on a three-syllable word, and its confidence is rated low because an iambic reading is nearly as good.

Where the Analyzer and Your Teacher May Disagree

• Scansion is interpretation. Two careful readers scan the same line differently, especially around function words and secondary stress. The tool gives one defensible reading and shows when another is close.
• Pronunciation has changed. Words such as heaven, every and fire were said with fewer syllables in verse than the dictionary records, and Shakespeare's -ion endings sometimes took two. The tool lets alternative readings in, at a small penalty, and tells you which it used. Untick the box to see the plain dictionary reading.
• Iambic and trochaic readings overlap. An iambic line is a trochaic line with one extra syllable in front. The tool prefers the reading that fits better, and the ranking at the foot of the result shows how close the others come.
• Words missing from the dictionary are counted from spelling and their stress is shown as ?, which the fit treats neutrally.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I know if a poem is in iambic pentameter?

Count ten syllables a line, then check that they fall into five pairs of unstressed then stressed: da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM. Real poems vary this, so look for most lines to fit with only a few substitutions. The analyzer does the matching and shows each line's fit.

What is the difference between a foot and a metre?

A foot is one unit of rhythm, such as an iamb or a trochee. A metre is the foot type together with the number of feet in a line, so five iambs a line is iambic pentameter.

What does catalectic mean?

A catalectic line is missing its final unstressed syllable or syllables. Trochaic tetrameter catalectic, the metre of Blake's The Tiger, has seven syllables instead of eight.

What is a feminine ending?

A feminine ending is an extra unstressed syllable after the last stressed one, as in to be or not to be, that is the question. The analyzer accepts one in iambic and anapestic lines and says so.

Why are some words marked with a cross instead of a stress mark?

They are one-syllable function words such as the, of and to, which speakers stress or leave unstressed as the line needs. The cross means flexible. Treating them as fixed would make many lines look irregular for no good reason.

Is blank verse the same as iambic pentameter?

Blank verse is unrhymed iambic pentameter. Use the analyzer to check the metre, and the Rhyme Scheme Analyzer to confirm there is no rhyme.

Is my poem sent anywhere?

No. The pronunciation dictionary is downloaded once from this site and everything else runs in your browser.