Sprung rhythm

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title: "Sprung rhythm" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["poetic-rhythm", "victorian-poetry"] description: "Poetic rhythm mimicking natural speech" topic_path: "general/poetic-rhythm" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprung_rhythm" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Poetic rhythm mimicking natural speech ::

Sprung rhythm is a poetic rhythm designed to imitate the rhythm of natural speech. It is constructed from feet in which the first syllable is stressed and may be followed by a variable number of unstressed syllables. The British poet Gerard Manley Hopkins said he discovered this previously unnamed poetic rhythm in the natural patterns of English in folk songs, spoken poetry, Shakespeare, Milton, et al. He used diacritical marks on syllables to indicate which should be stressed in cases "where the reader might be in doubt which syllable should have the stress" (acute, e.g. shéer) and which syllables should be pronounced but not stressed (grave, e.g., gleanèd).

Some critics believe he merely coined a name for poems with mixed, irregular feet, like free verse. However, while sprung rhythm allows for an indeterminate number of syllables to a foot, Hopkins was very careful to keep the number of feet per line consistent across each individual work, a trait that free verse does not share. Sprung rhythm may be classed as a form of accentual verse, as it is stress-timed, rather than syllable-timed, and while sprung rhythm did not become a popular literary form, Hopkins's advocacy did assist in a revival of accentual verse more generally.

Notes

References

References

1. "[http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/561472/sprung-rhythm Sprung Rhythm in Hopkins]", Britannica Online
2. ''In the Classic Mode: The Achievement of Robert Bridges'', by Donald Elwin Stanford, 1978, pp. 81–92; see [https://books.google.com/books?id=177cBAIB8gMC&pg=PA81&dq=%22accentual+verse%22+%22sprung+rhythm%22 p. 81] for "Sprung rhythm ... is a special kind of accentual verse"
3. "[http://www.danagioia.net/essays/eaccentual.htm Accentual verse]", [[Dana Gioia]]

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