pauses within the line, and a stop, or long pause at the end of the line, generally established the meter. The characters (or syllables) between the caesuras or end stops can be considered to be a metric foot. The caesuras tended to both be fixed depending upon the formal rules for that type of poem and to match the natural rhythm of speech based upon units of meaning spanning the characters.

Line length

Line length could be fixed or variable, and was based on the number of syllables/characters.

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