Cadence
Quick answer: Cadence is the natural rise and fall of the voice in poetry, especially the rhythmic curve of phrase and line endings. Learn how poets shape it deliberately.
Cadence is the natural rise and fall of the voice moving through language, and in poetry it names especially the rhythmic curve with which a phrase, line or whole poem comes to rest. The word descends from the Latin for falling, and that origin still governs its use: we speak of a dying cadence, of a poem's closing cadence, of a poet with an unmistakable cadence, meaning the characteristic melody of their sentences.
Cadence matters most where meter ends. Free verse gave up counting feet, and its defenders, notably Amy Lowell and the Imagists, argued that it was organised instead by cadence, the shaped breath of the speaking voice. Whether or not you accept that theory, every poet manages cadence at two points without fail: the end of each line and the end of the poem.
How It Works
English intonation falls at completed statements and rises at questions and suspensions, and readers carry those habits into verse. A line ending on a stressed monosyllable after falling pitch sounds settled: The last boat left the harbour before dark. A line that ends mid-thought keeps the pitch hanging and pulls the reader over the break. By arranging where sentences complete themselves relative to where lines end, a poet composes with the reader's voice, scoring rises and falls without a single metrical rule.
Where You Will Meet the Term
In discussions of the Bible's English, whose translators built famous falling rhythms; in criticism of Whitman, whose long lines ride wave after wave of oratorical cadence; in the manifestos of early twentieth-century free verse, where cadenced verse was offered as a third way between meter and prose. Music theory uses the same word for the chord movement that closes a phrase, and the borrowing runs both directions: critics say a poem ends on an unresolved cadence exactly as musicians do.
How to Use It in Your Own Poems
Attend to your endings in ascending order of size: phrase, line, stanza, poem. Read the last line of each stanza aloud and ask what your voice does, settles, lifts or trails. If every stanza closes with the same falling shape, the poem flatlines; vary the cadences as a composer varies closes. The final line deserves the most care, since its cadence is the taste the poem leaves. Writory's judges, scoring emotion and structure together, hear a controlled closing cadence as both at once.
What poets can take from this
- Read line endings aloud and classify each as settling, lifting or trailing.
- End statements low and questions or suspensions high, then break the rule knowingly.
- Vary stanza-closing cadences so the poem does not repeat one melodic shape.
- Give your final line a cadence that matches the poem's emotional verdict.
- Study the King James Psalms and Whitman for cadence built without meter.
Try it yourself
Write a free verse poem of three stanzas about the last hour of daylight. Make the first stanza's lines end suspended, the second stanza's end settled, and the third mix the two, then read it aloud and mark what your pitch actually does.
Questions
What is the difference between cadence and rhythm?
Rhythm is the whole pattern of movement in a passage; cadence is the curve of rise and fall, particularly at endings. Cadence is one instrument in the rhythm section, the one that handles closure.
What is cadenced verse?
A term promoted by Amy Lowell and other early free verse poets for poetry organised by the shaped rise and fall of the speaking voice rather than by counted meter. It described much Imagist practice and remains a useful way to think about free verse.
Can a metrical poem have cadence?
Certainly. Meter fixes the syllable pattern, but the melodic rise and fall across phrases and endings is a separate layer, which is why two competent poems in identical meter can sound utterly different.
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.