Stress in poetry

One of the more difficult concepts to understand when both reading and writing poetry is the concept of stress. Stress applies to syllables rather than to words. It's also called either accent or beat. To illustrate the concept, two lines from the poem Maud Muller will be used.

Maud Muller, on a summer's day,
Raked the meadow sweet with hay.

The first line contains eight syllables. "Muller" and "summer's" contain two syllables; the rest contain one. When I read that line, my voice rose when I said "Maud," the first syllable in "Muller," the first syllable in "summer's," and day. The syllables in which my voice did not rise are the unstressed syllables. This lines stresses go this way: up, up, down, up, down, up, down, up.

The second line contains seven syllables. Only one of its words, "meadow," contains one syllable. My voice rose when I said "Raked," the first syllable in "meadow," "sweet," and "hay." It too reads like a roller coaster: up, down, up, down, up, down, up.

The rhythm is like doing toe raises. Up, down, up, down. Stress, unstress, stress, unstress.

When the first of two consecutive syllables is stressed and the second one is unstressed, it's called a trochee.

Compare John Greenleaf Whittier's poem with this well-known nursery rhyme:

Jack and Jill went up the hill,
To fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down and broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after.

In Jack and Jill's first line, every other syllable is stressed, beginning with the first one. In the second line, however, every other syllable is stressed, beginning with the second one ("fetch"). The last two sentences in the first stanza have the same "meter" as the first two. (A stanza is a set of lines that have been grouped together. A four-lined stanza is called a quatrain.)

As an interesting aside, rhyming lines that end on a stressed syllable are called masculine rhymes; whereas, rhyming lines that end on an unstressed syllable are called feminine rhymes. In Jack and Jill, as the second and fourth lines end in an unstressed syllable and rhyme, they're feminine rhymes. If the first and lines lines had rhymed, they would be masculine rhymes, as they end in stressed syllables.

The best way to learn about stress is to read poems aloud. Listen for the syllables you say louder and those you say lower.

You can learn more about poetry's basic elements here.