Rhythm:  the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in language, especially poetry

Example 1 from everyday language:

If you think of any song that you know, it will have a set rhythm - otherwise the words to each verse would not fit the same section of the music.

We also find that there is a set rhythm to nursery rhymes: 

/ ~ / ~   ~  ~ /  ~

Mary, Mary, quite contrary,

 

  /    ~  ~   /  ~    /

How does your garden grow ?

 

  ~  /  ~  /   ~  / ~   /

With silver bells and cockle shells,

 

 ~   /  ~  /  ~ ~ ~  /

And pretty maids all in a row

For this nursery rhyme, I have marked the rhythm for you - the stressed syllables are represented by a / and the unstressed syllables are marked with a ~

Example 2 from literature:

Now look at this sonnet by William Shakespeare

A Sonnet has very definite rules about rhythm.  Each line must have 10 syllables (beats) and each pair of syllables must be an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one ( ~ / ).  I have noted the rhythm in the first few lines, now you can work out the rest.   Remember all the lines MUST have the same rhythm.

  ~  / ~  /   ~   /~ /  ~    /

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:

        Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

        And often is his gold complexion dimmed,

        And every fair from fair some time declines

        By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:

        But they eternal summer shall not fade,

        Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,

        Nor shall death brag thou wandrest in his shade,

        When in eternal lines o time thou grow'st,

                So long as men can breathe and eyes can see,

                So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

       

Sonnet 18, by William Shakespeare

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