Hexameter (poetry)

Hexameter is a metric structure in poetry in which a line consists of six (or hex) metrical feet. When the primary elements within hexameter are dactyls or spondees, and when a pattern of rules is followed, then the hexameter may be described as dactylic hexameter which was used in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid. As a rhyme scheme, it works well with Latin and Greek languages, but there have been few works in which English poems have been set successfully using dactylic hexameter. It has never worked particularly well in English, but was the structure of choice for poets such as Homer and others from the early classical period of Greece and Rome. In English, the standard meter is iambic pentameter.