Loosely defined, poetry consists of compressed and regularly rhythmic statements.  Thus the examination of meter, the means by which rhythm is measured and described, assumes great importance in the discussion of poetry.  Scholars have attributed the discrepancy between our system of meter and the classical-Latin and Greek-system of meter to the Germanic origins of our language.  Classical meter measured the length of the syllable.  English language poetry, on the other hand, marks meter according to the pattern of "stressed and unstressed, or accented and unaccented syllables."  Emphasis on particular syllables may come from the natural patterns of the words themselves or may come from the emphasis provided by the speaker.  The former are known as word accents and the latter are known as rhetorical accents.  (Norton English Literature II, 7th ed. 2928).

Scanning Robert Browning's poem "My Last Duchess," one immediately notices...