Poulter's Measure
Quick answer: Poulter's measure explained: the Tudor couplet of twelve and fourteen syllable lines, where its odd name comes from, and how to use it without plodding.
Poulter's measure is a rhyming couplet with uneven legs: a twelve-syllable iambic line, an alexandrine, followed by a fourteen-syllable line, a fourteener. Six beats, then seven, rhymed AA, over and over. Tudor poets loved it; almost everyone since has teased it, and both parties have a point.
The name is a joke as old as the form. George Gascoigne explained it in 1575: poulters, sellers of poultry, would allegedly give twelve to the dozen on one count and fourteen on the next, so a metre alternating twelve and fourteen syllables was the poulter's own arithmetic. That a major verse form is named after inconsistent egg-selling tells you the English never quite took it at its own valuation.
A Tudor favourite and its fall
In the mid-1500s, poulter's measure was everywhere. Wyatt used it, Surrey used it repeatedly, Nicholas Grimald and the poets of Tottel's Miscellany (1557) used it for complaint, moral reflection and elegy. Queen Elizabeth I herself wrote in it, notably the poem on her doubtful future beginning with fear suspended and joy distrusted. Then taste turned. The couplet's heavy sing-song came to sound plodding beside the new blank verse and the polished pentameter line; critics from Sidney's generation onward treated it as apprentice work, and C. S. Lewis's verdict on the mid-Tudor 'drab age' fixed its reputation. It survives most healthily in disguise: split at its pauses, the couplet becomes the short metre of hymnals, 6.6.8.6.
How the couplet is built
Line one: iambic hexameter, twelve syllables, with a natural pause after the sixth. Line two: iambic heptameter, fourteen syllables, pausing after the eighth. The two lines rhyme AA, and couplets chain for as long as the poem runs. The strong internal pauses are structural: read aloud, the couplet falls into four phrases of six, six, eight and six syllables, which is exactly the short-metre hymn quatrain folded into two lines.
That hidden quatrain explains both the form's memorability and its menace. The four-phrase lilt is catchy in the way of ballads and nursery rhymes, and after a dozen couplets the lilt can become a rocking horse no rider controls.
Using it in the present tense
Modern poets who touch poulter's measure usually do one of three things. They play it straight for pastiche or period voice, they exploit the sing-song deliberately for comedy or lullaby or incantation, or they roughen it, varying the caesura, enjambing across the couplet, slanting the rhymes, so the rocking horse bucks. All three are honest uses; drifting into the jog-trot unawares is the only dishonest one.
A practical approach: draft the fourteener first, since its extra weight carries the couplet's meaning, then build the alexandrine as approach. Keep sentence grammar pushing across the internal pauses at least once per couplet, and cap sequences at modest length. Ten couplets of this metre is a meal; forty is a siege.
Where it works, and its famous flaw
The measure suits lament, proverb-like moralising, comic verse and songs meant to sound old. Its four-phrase swing is genuinely mnemonic, which the hymn tradition proves.
The famous flaw is monotony: identical pauses, identical rhyme thumps, couplet after couplet. Beginners compound it by padding lines to reach twelve and fourteen syllables. If a phrase exists only to fill the count, the poulter is short-changing you, exactly as the name warns.
What poets can take from this
- Write the fourteener first; it carries the meaning, the alexandrine approaches.
- Push syntax across the internal pauses to break the rocking rhythm.
- Slant an occasional rhyme to soften the AA thump.
- Keep sequences short; the metre exhausts ears quickly.
- Exploit the sing-song deliberately for song, spell or comedy.
- Split a couplet into 6.6.8.6 quatrains to discover its hymn form.
Try it yourself
Write six couplets of poulter's measure as a market-seller's spiel for something impossible to sell, letting the metre's swing do the persuading and one enjambed couplet break the pattern.
Questions
What is poulter's measure?
A Tudor verse form of rhymed couplets pairing a twelve-syllable iambic line with a fourteen-syllable one. Gascoigne named it in 1575 after poulterers who gave twelve or fourteen eggs to the dozen.
Why did poulter's measure fall out of fashion?
Its heavy internal pauses and emphatic rhymes turn quickly into a jog-trot rhythm, which later Elizabethan taste found plodding beside blank verse and the pentameter couplet. It became a byword for mid-Tudor stiffness.
How is it related to short metre?
Split each line at its pause and the couplet becomes a quatrain of 6, 6, 8 and 6 syllables, the short metre of English hymnals. The two forms are the same music printed differently.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
Enter a Writory poetry contest
Enter the September contest and have your own poem read and scored. That first entry makes you a Writorian.