Editing Hexameter (section)

== Application==
Although the rules seem simple, it is hard to use classical hexameter in English, because English is a [[Isochrony#Stress timing|stress-timed]] language that condenses vowels and consonants between stressed syllables, while hexameter relies on the regular timing of the phonetic sounds. Languages having the latter properties (i.e., languages that are not stress-timed) include Ancient Greek, Latin, Lithuanian and Hungarian.

While the above classical hexameter has never enjoyed much popularity in English, where the standard metre is [[iambic pentameter]], English poems have frequently been written in [[iambic hexameter]]. There are numerous examples from the 16th century and a few from the 17th; the most prominent of these is [[Michael Drayton]]'s ''[[Poly-Olbion]]'' (1612) in couplets of iambic hexameter. An example from Drayton (marking the six feet on each line):
:Nor a/ny o/ther wold / like Cot/swold e/ver sped,
:So rich / and fair / a vale / in for/tuning / to wed.

In the 17th century the iambic hexameter, also called [[alexandrine]], was used as a substitution in the [[heroic couplet]], and as one of the types of permissible lines in lyrical stanzas and the [[Pindaric]] odes of [[Abraham Cowley|Cowley]] and [[John Dryden|Dryden]].

Several attempts were made in the 19th century to naturalise the [[dactylic hexameter]] to English — by [[Henry Wadsworth Longfellow]], [[Arthur Hugh Clough]], and others — none of them particularly successful. [[Gerard Manley Hopkins]] wrote many of his poems in six-foot iambic and [[sprung rhythm]] lines. In the 20th century a loose ballad-like six-foot line with a strong medial pause was used by [[William Butler Yeats]]. The iambic six-foot line has also been used occasionally, and an accentual six-foot line has been used by translators from the Latin and many poets.

In the late 18th century the hexameter was adapted to the [[Lithuanian language]] by [[Kristijonas Donelaitis]]. His poem ''[[The Seasons (poem)|"Metai" (The Seasons)]]'' is considered the most successful hexameter text in Lithuanian as yet.

For dactylic hexameter poetry in [[Hungarian language]], see [[Dactylic hexameter#In Hungarian]].

{{ill|Albert Meyer (translator)|de|Albert Meyer (Übersetzer)|lt=Albert Meyer}} (1893–1962) used a natural form of hexameter in his translation of some verses from Homer's ''Odyssey'' into the Swiss dialect of [[Bern]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Bärndütsch isch Chärndütsch |url=http://www.edimuster.ch/baernduetsch/chaernduetsch.htm |access-date=2024-09-08}}</ref>