I'm pretty sure you were just trying to showcase the stresses, but your last example is in iambic tetrameter, not pentameter. Which is another frequent source o

I'm pretty sure you were just trying to showcase the stresses, but your last example is in iambic tetrameter, not pentameter. Which is another frequent source of confusion. For some reason, the fact that "penta" stands for "five" (like the Pentagon!) seems to get lost in a lot of these discussions. They must be teaching poetry these days without explaining the Greek/Latin origin of the terms they use. Word roots are fascinating. Epics were written in dactylic hexameter. Dactyls mean fingers. You know, as in pterodactyls. They're called pterodactyls because their wings (ptero-) were supported by their long fingers. A dactyl has three syllables, DA-da-da, just like the sections of your fingers.