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Meter

More basic to poetry than rhyme is rhythm.  In poetry, rhythm is based on syllables, and it is called meter (from the Greek word to measure).  In English, meter is based on stress, and the types of meter are arrangements of stressed and unstressed syllables into patterns.  This is qualitative meter.  Quantitative meter is something you’ll rarely encounter in English.  It is based on the length, not the stress, of a syllable, and it is the basis for meter in the Greek and Latin tradition.  In languages like Japanese, simply counting syllables may provide the rhythm.
The basic unit of meter is the foot.  These are the standard feet:

• Iamb.  An iamb is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.  Words like become are iambic.  This is the normal foot for most English poetry.
• Trochee. A trochee is the opposite of an iamb: it is a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable.  The word poet (and the word trochee itself) is trochaic.
• Anapest.  An anapest is two unstressed syllables follow by a stressed syllable (“in a word” is an anapest).  It tends to be used in comic verse, such as limericks.
• Dactyl.  This is the opposite of an anapest.  It is a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables (Benjamin, for instance).  The Greek word dactyl means finger, and if you look at your finger it has one long joint followed by two short ones (Greek meter was based on long and short syllables, not stressed and unstressed syllables).
• Spondee.  This is two stressed syllables side by side.  Very rarely is a whole line spondaic; this foot is used for contrast: it slows a line down and provides emphasis.

In describing poetry, one gives the standard type of foot and then counts how many feet are in the line.  Thus iambic pentameter means the standard ten-syllable line is constructed out of five iambs (this is the standard English form); trochaic hexameter is a twelve-syllable basic line made up of six trochees; and anapestic tetrameter is another twelve-syllable line but constructed out of four anapests.  (for those who can’t count in Greek, you get monometer, dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, hexameter, heptameter, octameter). 

To determine the meter of a poem, one scans it, which means marking where the stressed and unstressed syllables fall.  (It’s almost impossible to scan silently; read things aloud repeatedly.)  By convention, one writes over the syllable a ˘ for an unstressed syllable and a ’ for stressed syllables.  One separates the feet by  /.  A scanned line of poetry thus will look like this:

Shăll Í / cŏmpáre / thĕe tó / ă súm/mĕr’s dáy?
Thŏu aŕt / mŏre lóve/ly ánd / mŏre tém/pĕráte.

In this case, we see Shakespeare used perfect iambic pentameter to begin a sonnet.  You can mark a pause (caesura is the technical term) with //.

As you can see from the example above, one thing that makes scansion difficult is that stressed and unstressed are not absolute qualities; it depends on comparison to the syllables near by.  The “to” in the first line is not strongly stressed, but it is definitely more stressed than the “a,” that follows, and many people would read the line with more stress on the “to” than the “thee” preceding it, and so the “to” is marked as stressed.  At the beginning of the line, “Shall” receives more stress than usual because it is at the beginning of the line, but the “I” receives even more stress, at least in some readings, and so I have scanned the opening foot as an iamb.

Different meters have different moods.  Iambic is a fairly standard rhythm in English.  Anapestic rhythm is often – although not always – heard as comic in English, perhaps because a modified form of it is used in limericks.  To take examples of the uses of the different meters from someone who is a better novelist than poet, here is some of J.K Rowling’s verse from the Harry Potter books. 

                        Sorting Hat’s Song
In times of old when I was new
And Hogwarts barely started
The founders of our noble school
Thought never to be parted.

Scan this.  Are you convinced it’s iambic tetrameter?  It’s a good basic meter for all kinds of things, including this verse which is light but not comic.  In contrast, look at the following two poems.

                        Peeves’s Song
            Oh, Potter, you rotter, oh, what have you done,
            You’re killing off students, you think it’s good fun.

Scan this (I think it’s anapestic tetrameter with the opening foot of each line missing a syllable).  Despite the serious subject, Peeves is teasing Harry, and the meter is a sign to take the song lightly. 
I’ve scanned the following snippet because it’s slightly harder.

                        Harry’s Valentine
            Hĭs eyés / ăre ăs gréen / ăs ă frésh / pĭcklĕd tóad,
            Hĭs háir / ĭs ăs dárk / ăs ă bláckbóard
            Ĭ wísh / hĕ wăs míne, // hĕ’s real/ly dĭvíne
            Thĕ hé/rŏ whŏ cón/quĕred thĕ Dárk Lórd

The base rhythm is anapestic (with the substitution of an initial iamb for an anapest, much like limericks), which helps signal the comic character of the verse.  “pickled in the first line could be read with a stress on the first syllable, but it doesn’t have to be, and the meter suggests it should not be.  Likewise, the pause on the third line is metrically important; it takes the place of an unstressed syllable in the rhythm.  Notice the meter breaks at the end of lines two and four – some variety is allowable.  In this case, note the meter breaks the same way: “Blackboard” and “Dark Lord” not only rhyme, but they scan identically, a spondee (double stress) where we expect a single stress.  This makes the Dark Lord stand out as a most uncomfortable addition to a love poem.

Comic verse doesn’t need to be anapestic, of course.  Look at this passage from Shakespeare, where a bad actor is trying (and failing) to be tragic:

Asleep, my love?
What, dead, my dove?
O Pyramus, arise!
Speak,speak!  Quite dumb?
Dead, dead?  A tomb
Must cover thy sweet eyes.
These lily lips,
This cherry nose,
These yellow cowslip cheeks,
Are gone, are gone!
Lovers, make moan;
His eyes were green as leeks.

It’s humor is similar to Harry’s valentine: the physical descriptions are hilariously inappropriate, and there’s a funny balance between the comedy and potential tragedy.  But Shakespeare did not switch to anapestic: he stays with iambic (are you convinced?) but with short lines (a three-line pattern of two, two, and three feet).  Note that meter can help you figure out how to pronounce Pyramus by telling you where the stress should fall.

Writing a poem that is metrically perfect would mean creating something very tedious.  Good poets establish a base rhythm and then vary it, and the variations will stand out in consequence.  Try scanning these lines from Hamlet:

To be or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them.  To die, to sleep.
I would scan them like this:
Tŏ bé / ŏr nót / tŏ bé, / thăt ís / thĕ quéstĭon:
Whéthĕr / ‘tĭs nób/lĕr ín / thĕ mínd / tŏ súffĕr
Thĕ slíngs / ănd ar/rŏws óf / ŏutráge/ ŏus fórtŭne
Ór tŏ / táke árms / ăgaínst / ă séa / ŏf tróublĕs,
Ănd bý / ŏppós/ĭng énd / thĕm. // Tŏ díe, tŏ sléep.

Do you agree?  The base line is iambic pentameter, but Shakespeare varies it a lot (in part to show that Hamlet is barely in control of himself, perhaps).  He throws in an extra weak syllable at the end of the first four lines, creating a pattern so that when he omits it in the fifth line, “to die, to sleep,” sounds cut off, echoing the finality of death, since for the first time in his speech he has said the word “die.”  In the second line, he begins with a trochee instead of an iamb, which is a common substitution.  Notice in the last line that a caesura (pause) takes the place of a stressed syllable.  The meter guides us, insisting that the pause be significant.  (Likewise, in the first line it is the meter that tells us to stress the “is” rather than the “that” in “that is the question.”)

I took a risk on the fourth line.  It is perfectly possible to read this line as perfect iambic pentameter (except for the final, extra weak syllable).  Doing so would show Hamlet in control, playing elaborate games with words and ideas as he is wont to do.  But I scanned the opening part of the line as two unstressed syllables followed by two stressed syllables.  This interrupts the meter, and to me helps mark the imagined change from meekly accepting events to defying the world by violent suicide.

The true test of scansion is whether it can sound good being read aloud.  There is some room for disagreement, but that is not license to scan things however you please.  Poets will often help and indicate contractions, (‘tis for it is, o’er for over) when they are trying to make the meter work.