ABSTRACT
One of the most distinctive characteristics of English speech pattern is the phenomenon of stress. A native speaker of English, acquainted with English poetry, has no difficulty in recognizing what he means by a syllable in the metrical sense. The difference between verse and prose or speech, therefore, is not that verse has rhythm, and prose and speech have not, but that in verse a rhythmical unit, the line, is superimposed upon the general grammatical unit of all discourse, the sentence. Prose is written in sentences. Verse is written in sentences and also in lines. A succession of lines of the same metrical pattern, a succession of iambic pentameters, for instance, is rather like a succession of waves breaking on the shore. A line of verse then is a rhythmical unit, which can be analysed in some way, and which sets up an expectation that it will be followed by a number of similar rhythmical units.
