Lyric Poetry

Lyric poetry for the ancient Greeks had a precise and technical meaning: verse that was accompanied by the lyre. The lyric poet was classified as distinct from the writer of plays (which were spoken rather than sung), the writer of trochaic and iambic verses (which were recited), from the writer of elegies (which were accompanied by the flute, rather than the lyre) and the writer of epics. The scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria identified nine lyric poets worthy of critical study. These archaic Greek musician-poets included Sappho, Pindar, Anacreon and Alcaeus. The metrical forms characteristic of ancient Greek sung verse are strophes, antistrophes and epodes.

Meters
Much lyric poetry depends on regular meter based either on number of syllables or on stress. The most common meters are as follows:

• Iambic - two syllables, with the long or stressed syllable following the short or unstressed syllable.
• Trochaic - two syllables, with the short or unstressed syllable following the long or stressed syllable.
• Anapestic - three syllables, with the first two short or unstressed and the last long or stressed.
• Dactylic - three syllables, with the first one long or stressed and the other two short or unstressed.

Some forms have a combination of meters, often using a different meter for the refrain. Each meter can have any number of elements, called feet. The most common meter in English is iambic pentameter, with five iambs per line. The most common in French is the alexandrin, with twelve syllables. In English, the alexandrine is iambic hexameter.