ABSTRACT
There is a temptation to see metre wholly in terms of phonological schemes, i.e. as a matter of how many stresses and syllables are permitted in a line of verse.1
Although writers on metre do raise the question of the function of metre,2 on the whole their comments are not set within a framework which relates metre as a phonological expression to other levels of language which it expresses. I suggest that we can understand the point or ‘meaning’ of metre more clearly if we see its phonology in a way that is comparable with the way we look at other aspects of the phonology of texts, i.e. as the expression of something. This will be discussed in terms of the systemic model of language, in which the relation amongst three levels or strata is central (see Halliday, 1985). Although systemicists have discussed metre, they too have concentrated on its phonological realization, rather than seeing it in relation to other levels of language.3
