This French metre consists of eight syllables when the ending is monosyllabic, and nine when it is disyllabic.
The lines are always connected in couplets by rhyme, but masculine and feminine rhymes need not alternate with one another.
It is exactly the same with the Middle English four-foot line, except that the rising iambic rhythm comes out more clearly in it, and that, instead of the Romanic principle of counting the syllables, that of the equality of beats is perceptible, so that the equality of the number of syllables in the verses is not so strictly observed. Hence, all the deviations before mentioned from the strict formal structure of even-beat verses occur even in this early poem, and quite regularly constructed couplets are indeed but rare in it. Examples of this type are the following:
_Ah, láverd gód, her úre béne, Of úre súnne máke us cléne, Þet hé us [gh]éue alswá he méi, Þet ús bihóueð úlche déi._ ll. 167-170.
The first ten lines of the poem give a sufficient idea of the structure of the verse, and its characteristics:
_Ure féder þét in héouene ís, Þet ís all sóþ fúl iwís! Weo móten tó þeos wéordes iséon, Þet to líue and to sáule góde béon, Þet wéo beon swá his súnes ibórene, Þet hé beo féder and wé him icórene, Þet wé don álle hís ibéden Ánd his wílle fór to réden. Lóke weo ús wið hím misdón Þurh béelzebúbes swíkedóm._
Here we find almost all the rhythmical licences to be found in even-beat metres. Thus we have suppression of the anacrusis in line 8 and again in two consecutive lines, such as 15, 16:
_Gíf we léornið gódes láre, Þénne of-þúnceð hít him sáre;_
and very often in the course of the poem, e.g. ll. 22, 29, 30, 37, &c., so that it acquires a loose, iambic-trochaic cadence; further, the absence of an unaccented syllable in the middle of the line (line 2); inversion of accent in line 9, and again in line 81, _Láverd he ís of álle scáfte_; two unaccented syllables at the beginning and in the interior of the verse in 4; light slurrings ll. 1, 3, 5; only ll. 7 and 10 are regularly constructed throughout. The same proportion of regular to irregular verses runs through the whole poem, in which, besides the licences mentioned, that of level stress is also often to be met with, especially in rhymes like _w+u+rþ+í+ng: héovenkíng_ 99-100; _h+a+t+í+ng: king_ 193-4, 219-20; _fóndúnge: swínkúnge_ 242-3.