The race of the flowers rhythm
The poem by William Brighty Rands is a fascinating one written with an unusual Iambic rhythm I think.
If you take the first four lines (the first stanza) the rhythm becomes quite apparent:
The trees and the flowers seem running a race,
But none treads down the other;
And neither thinks it his disgrace
To be later than his brother.
How to work out the rhythm of a poem:
It's all to do with the stress put on syllables:
There are 5 types of rhythm we can talk about
- Iambic
- Trochaic
- Spondaic
- Anapestic
- Dactylic
We then look at how many meters are in a line:
1 foot: Monometer
2 feet: Dimeter
3 feet: Trimeter
4 feet: Tetrameter
5 feet: Pentameter
6 feet: Hexameter
