Rhythm English has what we call a stress - timed rhythm, which means that the stressed syllables come at approximately equal intervals of time , regardless of the number of the intervening unstressed syllables. Take a sentence like A ' change of 'air would 'do you 'good . The stressed syllables are marked with the sign before them . Here we have 8 syllables of which 4 are stressed , and they come at equal intervals of time . So we have a rhythmic pattern consisting of unstressed syllables and stressed syllables coming alternately. This kind of rhythm is quite common in poetry and is called imabic metre. 'Metre' is the term used to indicate the number of stressed syllables that form the beats (or feet) and the arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables in each line of a poem. So in the line give above has four beats or four feet. If we have a pattern in which one week ( unstressed) syllables is followed by one strong syllable , we call it ' iambic m...
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