According to Harmon and Holman, the Iamb was "the most common rhythm used in English verse for many centuries." (A Handbook to Literature 10th Ed. pg. 266).
Pentameter: A line of verse that contains five feet of stressed and unstressed syllables.
Example: Shakespearean Sonnets (http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/116.html)
| SONNET 116 |
|---|
| Let me not to the marriage of true minds |
| Admit impediments. Love is not love |
| Which alters when it alteration finds, |
| Or bends with the remover to remove: |
| O no! it is an ever-fixed mark |
| That looks on tempests and is never shaken; |
| It is the star to every wandering bark, |
| Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. |
| Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks |
| Within his bending sickle's compass come: |
| Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, |
| But bears it out even to the edge of doom. |
| If this be error and upon me proved, |
| I never writ, nor no man ever loved. |
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