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Eliot wrote The Waste Land 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 somehow random or insignificant. On the contrary, careful consideration of the meter reveals that Eliot built the poem out of a range of different metrical forms, each with their distinct histories and associations.

Above all, Eliot relies on a loose form of blank verse, which is unrhymed iambic pentameter. (Recall that lines of iambic pentameter consist of five iambs, which have one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, as in the word “en-joy’d.”) By the twentieth century, blank verse had long been the meter of choice for English-language poets working on serious subjects. Five-foot lines were considered ideal because they approximated the cadence of natural speech and hence avoided the sing-song quality associated with tetrameter. Christopher Marlowe had been the first to popularize the use of blank verse in English poetry in the late sixteenth century. Shakespeare then masterfully showcased the versatility of the meter in his plays. Later still, John Milton used blank verse for his great epic, Paradise Lost (1667). Given its historical use for such epic poems, blank verse is often referred to as “heroic verse.”

Yet Eliot’s use of blank verse is anything but heroic. Indeed, throughout The Waste Land Eliot intentionally strains and even sullies this verse form. Consider the contrary uses of blank verse in “A Game of Chess.” The poem’s second section features two women in very different socio-economic circumstances. The first woman is a wealthy lady who awaits her lover in their immodestly decorated home (lines 77–84):

     The Chair / she sat / in, like / a burn- / ished throne,
     Glowed on / the mar- / ble, where / the glass
     Held up / by stand- / ards wrought / with fruit- / ed vines
     From which / a gold- / en Cup- / i-don / peeped out
     (A-no- / ther hid / his eyes / beh-ind / his wing)
     Doubl-ed / the flames / of sev- / en-branched / can-de / la-bra
     Re-flect- / ing light / u-pon / the ta- / ble as
     The glitt- / er of / her je- / wels rose / to meet / it

Aside from the odd substitution of a trochee (stressed–unstressed) and the extra foot in the sixth line, this passage exemplifies strict iambic pentameter. Initially, this meter seems appropriate, especially given that this woman is associated, by allusion, to Shakespeare’s Cleopatra and Virgil’s Dido. However, once we notice that this lengthy description pertains not to the lady but to the ornamental trappings of her empty home, the implicit nobility of the blank verse grows increasingly tarnished. And indeed, as the passage continues, we come to see the mismatch between the verse’s quiet dignity and the woman’s quiet desperation.

Eliot pushes blank verse even further with the second key figure in “A Game of Chess,” a working-class woman who recounts a story about her friend’s abortion while sitting in a pub. Consider a representative example (lines 142–46):

     Now Al- / bert’s com- / ing back, / make your- / self a / bit smart.
     He’ll want / to know / what you done / with that / mon-ey he / gave you
     To get / your-self / some teeth. / He did, / I was there.
     You have / them all / out, Lil, / and get / a nice / set,
     He said, / I swear, / I can’t / bear to / look at you.

Compared to the previous passage, this one is much looser. Although most of the lines here have five feet, none of them is strictly iambic. Several other types of metrical feel also appear, including spondees (stressed–stressed), anapests (unstressed–unstressed–stressed), and dactyls (stressed–unstressed–unstressed). The result is a severely strained blank verse, which suggests that this traditional verse form, long revered for its ability to capture the cadences of natural speech, is no longer relevant. Or worse: perhaps twentieth-century speech has degraded to such an extent that it sullies the nobility of blank verse. Eliot echoes this idea in “The Fire Sermon,” where Tiresias, speaking in blank verse, describes a typist and her lover engaging in remarkably unfulfilling sex. Eliot echoes the same idea again in “Death by Water,” where he uses blank verse to describe the Phoenician sailor’s rotting corpse after a “fortnight” (line 312) in the water.

Though Eliot relies heavily on loose blank verse, he also incorporates other metrical forms throughout the poem. For instance, The Waste Land opens with four-beat lines that reference the alliterative verse made popular in the medieval period (lines 1–4):

     A-pril is the cruell-est month, breed-ing
     Lil-acs out of the dead land, mix-ing
     Mem-or-y and de-sire, stirr-ing
     Dull roots with spring rain.

A similar four-beat line reappears in “The Fire Sermon,” where Queen Elizabeth recounts a sexual encounter with Leicester (lines 292–95):

     “Trams and dus-ty trees.
     High-bury bore me. Rich-mond and Kew
     Un-did me. By Rich-mond I raised my knees
     Sup-ine on the floor of a nar-row ca-noe.”

Also in “The Fire Sermon,” there appears a section with two-beat lines that reference a similar meter found Wagner’s opera, Twilight of the Gods. Eliot’s so-called “Thames-daughter” thus mimic Wagner’s daughters of the Rhine when they sing (lines 266–70):

                    The ri-ver sweats
                    Oil and tar
                    The bar-ges drift
                    With the turn-ing tide
                    Red sails

These and other meters derived from nursery rhymes, songs, and non-English language traditions establish a constantly shifting rhythm that reflects the poem’s characteristic fragmentation.

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