The metrical unit of English verse is conventionally considered to be the foot The chief metrical feet are these:

The line is the larger unit. Lines are named according to the number of feet they contain.

A line is described by naming the kind and the number of feet it contains; thus iambic pentameter:

Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height.

Such lines, written as couplets, especially if end-stopped, are called heroic couplets.

If there exists a hell - the case is clear-
Sir Toby's slaves enjoy that portion here.

Unrimed iambic pentameter lines are called blank verse (not to be confused with free verse).

To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visable forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours

Iambic tetrameter (when rimed, octosyllabic couplet)

The pleasures, melancholy, give,
And I with thee will choose to live.

Trochaic tetrameter

Tiger, tiger burning bright

Dactylic hexameter

This is the forest primeval, the murmring pines and the hemlocks

In lines where the unstressed syllable comes first (iambic and anapestic) we have what is sometimes called rising meter.

In lines where the stressed syllable comes first (trocaic and dactylic) we have what is sometimes called falling meter.

Trochee trips from long to short;
From long t long in solemn sort
Slow spondee stalks, strong foot, yet ill able
Ever to come up with Dactyl trisyllable.
Iambics march from short to long -
With a leap and a bound the swift anapest throng.
-Coleridge

Adapted from A.M.J. Smith's, Seven Centuries of Verse. 2nd edition. Schrbners, 1957.

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