Ash Wednesday

Eliot does not observe a consistent meter in this poem. Instead, the meter varies considerably, as does the length of the line and the length of each verse or stanza. In Part II, for example, many of the lines are short, consisting of dimeters and trimeters (two or three poetic feet). The other parts of the poem all have at least a few lines of this type. Many other lines are much longer, consisting of seven or eight feet.

Much of the poem has a basic iambic rhythm—an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable—which is not surprising, since that is the natural rhythm of the English language. Occasionally, there are iambic pentameter lines (a pentameter consists of five poetic feet), as in “The silent sister veiled in white and blue / Between the yews, behind the garden god” (Part IV, Lines 22-23). This is immediately followed by another, much longer iambic line, with seven feet rather than five (making it a heptameter): “whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke no word.” There are, however, innumerable variations in the iambic rhythm. In Part I, for example, the last five lines all begin with a trochaic foot (an inverted

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