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What does meter mean when used to describe poetry?

I am supposed to find the meter of this poem, but I'm not really sure what meter is. Can someone help me please =)?

DEATH is like the insect

Menacing the tree,

Competent to kill it,

But decoyed may be.

Bait it with the balsam, 5

Seek it with the knife,

Baffle, if it cost you

Everything in life.

Then, if it have burrowed

Out of reach of skill, 10

Ring the tree and leave it,—

’T is the vermin’s will.

4 Answers

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  • 1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    The number of syllables in each line.

    For each stanza in this poem it is: Line 1=6 syllables, Line 2=5 syllables, Line 3=6 syllables, and line 4=5 syllables.

  • sache
    Lv 4
    5 years ago

    the only area of your fact that made experience is this: "poetry is a be conscious puzzle" and yup that is it. study up on distinctive varieties. I actually have confidence rhyme and meter decrease the artist's freedom. that's up for debate, by using fact some say that in case you will write a fascinating poem following rhyme and meter they have mastered an artwork. yet I particularly have written poems off the cuff which I evaluate my terrific artwork. and a few quatrains, pantoums and villanelles that are horrid. that is what artwork is. no person favorite the "greats" till they have been ineffective.

  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    The measured arrangement of words in poetry, as by accentual rhythm, syllabic quantity, or the number of syllables in a line.

    A particular arrangement of words in poetry, such as iambic pentameter, determined by the kind and number of metrical units in a line.

    The rhythmic pattern of a stanza, determined by the kind and number of lines.

    Good luck:)

  • 1 decade ago

    the repition of syllaballs in a phrase

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