The art of writing verses, especially with regard to meter and rhythm. The term versification can also refer to a particular metrical structure or style or to a version in verse of something originally written in prose. Sidelight: Edgar Allan Poe's essay, " The Philosophy of Composition," describes the conception, construction, and versification of his poem, " The Raven." Sidelight: Classical versification was based on quantity, with the words arranged to form a systematic succession of long and short syllables, but this began to decline under the Roman Empire; the Romance Languages, being accentual in character, gave rise to accentual verse, which stress ed certain syllables instead of giving time quantities to them. The classical names of the metrical feet are commonly applied to modern poetic meter, an accented syllable being equivalent to a long syllable and an unaccented syllable to a short syllable.
Generally, the structural form of a verse, as revealed by scansion. Identification of verse structure includes the name of the metrical type and the name designating number of feet: Monometer: 1 foot Dimeter: 2 feet Trimeter: 3 feet Tetrameter: 4 feet Pentameter: 5 feet Hexameter: 6 feet Heptameter: 7 feet Octameter: 8 feet Nonameter: 9 feet The most common verse in English poetry is iambic pentameter. See foot for more information.