MEASURE is also used to signify the cadence and time observed in poetry, dancing, and music, to render them regular and agreeable.
The different measures or metres in poetry, are the different
Measure. different manners of ordering and combining the quantities, or the long and short syllables. Thus, hexameter, pentameter, iambic, sapphic verses, &c. consist of different measures.
In English verses, the measures are extremely various and arbitrary, every poet being at liberty to introduce any new form that he pleases. The most usual are the heroic, generally consisting of five long and five short syllables; and verses of four feet; and of three feet and a cæsuræ, or single syllable.
The ancients, by variously combining and transposing their quantities, made a vast variety of different measures. Of words, or rather feet of two syllables, they formed a spondee, consisting of two long syllables; a pyrrhic, of two short syllables; a trochee, of a long and a short syllable; and an iambic, of a short and a long syllable.
Of their feet of three syllables they formed a molossus, consisting of three long syllables; a tribrach, of three short syllables; a dactyl, of one long and two short syllables; and an anapest, of two short and one long syllable. The Greek poets contrived 124 different combinations or measures, under as many different names, from feet of two syllables to those of six.