Final answer:
To identify the meter in English poetry, listen to the stress patterns of the syllables in each line and look for patterns like iambic, trochaic, anapestic, or dactylic.
Step-by-step explanation:
To find the meter in English poetry, you must distinguish the patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables in each line. The most common foot in English poetry is the iamb, which consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one. However, there are other meters such as trochaic (stressed followed by unstressed), anapestic (two unstressed followed by one stressed), and dactylic (one stressed followed by two unstressed). A iambic pentameter is a poetic meter where each line has five iambs, or about ten syllables. By reading lines of poetry aloud and listening to the stress patterns, you can determine the type of meter and the number of feet within the line.
For instance, the line "The curfew tolls the knell of parting day" is an example of iambic meter. It can be identified by the sequence of unstressed and stressed beats when spoken aloud. On the other hand, if we look at Shakespeare's works, the line "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" from Sonnet 18 is a classic example of iambic pentameter. While examining poetry, note that it's typical for poets to include different meters within an iambic line to retain normal pronunciation and make the poem more engaging.