Question

Which meter is used in these lines from Shakespeare's Sonnet 18? Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, dactylic hexameter iambic pentameter trochaic tetrameter spondaic dimeter trochaic trimeter

Answer 1

Oo I recently learned meter in school.  Sorry, I didn't see this question earlier. I believe this section of the Sonnet 18 is written in Iambic Pentameter. We know it is iambic because we are able to stress every other syllable. 

Just a little hint: Not all, but most poems are written in iambic. Even a lot of pop songs now-a-days are written in iambic meter  ;) 

I believe Shakespeare had about 150 sonnets and only a few were not written in iambic. Crazy.

Answer 2

Shakespeare's sonnets are written in iambic pentameter, whic consists of five "feet" of one unstressed and one stressed syllable (sometimes noted as "x /" ). Every other syllable is stressed starting with the second. It is considered the most standard rhythm in English poetry. As an example, the scansion of the third verse would be as follows.

x                /   x      /          x     /     x     /      x    /    

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May