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Marlowe composed “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” in iambic tetrameter, which is a meter that consists of four iambs per line. (Recall that an iamb is metrical foot that has one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, as in the word “de-light.”) As you’ll no doubt notice if you read the poem aloud, iambic tetrameter tends to have a sing-song quality. Indeed, the four-beat lines correspond neatly to the four-beat measures of many song forms in the Western musical tradition, including ballads. The sing-song quality of iambic tetrameter becomes even more pronounced when compared to its sibling, iambic pentameter. This meter tends to sound more elevated and serious, given that its five-beat line doesn’t possess the same galloping momentum as tetrameter. Marlowe wrote his plays in finely crafted iambic pentameter,
so his choice not to use that meter here is itself significant. In the case of this poem, it’s clear that Marlowe used iambic tetrameter to keep the tone lighthearted and thereby signal that his subject matter is comic.

Though the poem’s underlying rhythm is iambic tetrameter, it’s worth noting that Marlowe features numerous minor variations to give the language texture and dynamic range. For the most part, the rhythmic variations involve the omission of unstressed syllables at different places in the line. As an example, consider the opening quatrain (lines 1–4):

     Come live | with me | and be | my love,
     And we | will all | the pleas- | ures prove,
     That Vall- | eys, groves, | hills, | and fields,
     Woods, | or stee- | py moun- | tain yields.

Whereas the first two lines offer perfect instances of iambic tetrameter, the following two lines are each missing one unstressed syllable. In the third line, there’s a missing unstressed syllable in the third foot. If you read this line aloud and maintain the underlying rhythm while still accounting for the omitted syllable, you’ll find you need to suspend time and give a bit more emphasis to the word “hills.” This moment of suspension suggests, through sound, the up-and-down quality of the hilly landscape the speaker is describing. Another unstressed syllable is missing in the quatrain’s final line. In this case, it’s the first foot that lacks an unstressed syllable. This type of omission creates what’s known as a headless line, since the missing syllable would have been the leading (or “head”) syllable for the entire line. Once again, the poet uses omission to create a sonic effect that supplements the visual image.

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