The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock: Meter

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Eliot wrote “Prufrock” in free verse, which means the poem doesn’t subscribe to any one metrical pattern. Yet it would be hasty to assume that just because of its variation in line length and rhythm, the poem’s meter is random or otherwise insignificant. On the contrary, careful consideration of the meter reveals that Eliot built “Prufrock” using a range of different metrical forms, each with their distinct histories and associations. Before the poem even officially begins, Eliot inaugurates its metrical patchwork with a quote from Dante’s Inferno, written in the Italian poet’s trademark eleven-syllable (or hendecasyllabic) line. When the poem proper kicks off, the rhythm takes on metrical forms more familiar to English-language poetry. But despite their familiarity, these meters pass by at a rapid pace that’s difficult to track in a real-time reading. As an example, let’s analyze the poem’s opening lines (1–7):

Let / us go / then, you / and I,                   [headless iambic tetrameter]
When the / eve-ning is / spread out / a-gainst / the sky       [irregular pattern]
Like a / pa-tient / e-ther- / ized up- / on a / ta-ble;       [trochaic hexameter]
Let / us go, / through cer- / tain half-/ des-er- / ted streets,   [headless iambic hexameter]
The mutt- / er-ing / re-treats                   [iambic trimeter]
Of rest- / less nights / in one- / night cheap / ho-tels       [iambic pentameter]
And saw- / dust rest- / au-rants / with oy- / ster-shells       [iambic pentameter]

Aside from the couplet that closes this quotation, each line here features a different meter. One general pattern we may observe about these lines is that they have an underlying iambic rhythm. Although the second and third lines prominently feature trochees (stressed–unstressed), all the other lines are composed entirely of iambs (unstressed–stressed).

But more significant than the rhythmic composition is the length of each line. Most lines in this passage are written in either pentameter (i.e., five feet) or hexameter (i.e., six feet). This fact is significant, given that in the English-language poetic tradition, pentameter and hexameter—whether iambic or trochaic—have been the preferred meters for writing verse epics. For this reason, they are both referred to as “heroic meter.” If Eliot flirts with heroic meter in these lines, he does so ironically, as a way of gesturing to the speaker’s decidedly unheroic demeanor. And yet, Eliot’s metrical choice here isn’t entirely ironic. The concluding lines, written in iambic pentameter, foreshadow the poem’s later references to Shakespeare, who wrote exclusively in that meter. (Indeed, at the poem’s end, the speaker will cast himself as a minor character in an imaginary Shakespeare play, at once indicating his ambition to play a major role and his failure to achieve it: “I am not Prince Hamlet” [line 11]). The metrical allusion to Shakespeare indicates Prufrock’s respect for a tradition to which he can never fully belong. Instead, he meanders through various metrical forms with as little sense of direction as he wanders through the streets.