Alexandrine

Alternate meaning: Alexandrine of Denmark

An alexandrine is a line of poetic meter. Alexandrines are common in the German literature of the Baroque period and in French poetry of the early modern and modern periods and much less common in English poetry, which is fond of an iambic pentameter or 5-foot verse. The word itself derives from a romance about Alexander the Great, which was written in this style.

In accentual verse, it is a line of iambic hexameter - a line of six feet or measures ("iambs"), each of which has two syllables with an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, or a short syllable followed by a long syllable, as in the word delay.

In syllabic verse, such as that used in French literature, an alexandrine is a line of twelve syllables, often with a caesura between the sixth and seventh syllables. The dramatic works of Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine are typically composed of rhyming alexandrine couplets.

In the poetry of Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene 8 lines of pentameter are followed by an alexandrine, the 6-foot line slowing the regular rhythm of the 5-foot lines.

Undoubtedly the most famous Alexandrine in the English language is a rhyming couplet of Alexander Pope's, in which the first line is in iambic pentameter and the second line is an alexandrine:

A needless alexandrine ends the song

that like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.