alejandrino - Syllabic verse, Accentual verse

Originating in the 13th-c, a Spanish verse form consisting of two hemistichs with seven syllables each. This is not to be confused with the French alexandrine, a line of twelve syllables, nor with the Portuguese alexandrine, a line of thirteen. The Spanish alejandrino derives its name from Alexander the Great, whose epic and legendary deeds were celebrated in this metre in the Libro de Alejandre.

An alexandrine is a line of poetic meter. Alexandrines are common in the German literature of the Baroque period and in French poetry of the early modern and modern periods and much less common in English poetry, which more frequently uses iambic pentameter or 5-foot verse.

Syllabic verse

In syllabic verse, such as that used in French literature, an alexandrine is a line of twelve syllables, divided into equal parts by one or two caesuras.

The dramatic works of Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine are typically composed of rhyming alexandrine couplets. en arrivant au port (Corneille, Le Cid Act IV , scene 3)

Baudelaire's Les Bijoux (The Jewels) is a typical example of the use of the alexandrine in 19th century French poetry :

La très-chère était nue, ||

Even a 20th century Surrealist, such as Paul Éluard used alexandrines on occasion, such as in these lines from L'Égalité des sexes (in Capitale de la douleur) (note the variation between caesuras after the 6th syllable, and after 4th and 8th):

Ni connu la beauté || ô ma statue

Accentual verse

In accentual verse, it is a line of iambic hexameter - a line of six feet or measures ("iambs"), each of which has two syllables with an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.

In quantitative meters, an iamb comprises a short syllable followed by a long syllable (as in the word delay), and an alexandrine consists of six such short+long feet.

In the poetry of Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene 8 lines of pentameter are followed by an alexandrine, the 6-foot line slowing the regular rhythm of the 5-foot lines.

Undoubtedly the most famous alexandrine in the English language is a rhyming couplet of Alexander Pope's, in which the first line is in iambic pentameter and the second line is an alexandrine:

A needless alexandrine ends the song that like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.

A few lines later Pope continues discussing fast lines:

Not so, when swift Camilla scours the Plain, Flies o'er th'unbending corn and skims along the Main.

The second line of the couplet, a very fast line, is remarkably an alexandrine itself, which Pope just claimed made the line excruciatingly slow. No hands.'"

Alexandrines are sometimes introduced into predominantly pentameter verse for the sake of variety. The Spenserian stanza, for instance, is eight lines of pentameter followed by an Alexandrine. In the Restoration and eighteenth century, poetry written in couplets is sometimes varied by the introduction of a triplet in which the third line is an Alexandrine, as in this example from Dryden, which introduces a triplet after two couplets:

But satire needs not those, and wit will shine Through the harsh cadence of a rugged line: A noble error, and but seldom made, When poets are by too much force betrayed. The new work, which was henceforth to set the fashion to French literature, was written in lines of twelve syllables, but with a freedom of pause which was afterwards greatly curtailed.