Poetic meter is a repeating pattern of stressed (DUM) and unstressed (da) syllables. This simulator estimates the pattern from your text automatically, the way a reader scans a line by ear:
1. Split each word into syllables by counting vowel-sound
clusters (a run of a,e,i,o,u,y), with a silent trailing
"e" dropped and a trailing "-le" counted as its own beat.
2. Mark short function words (the, a, of, and, to, in...)
as unstressed; other words carry stress on their first
syllable, alternating afterward.
3. Compare the resulting da/DUM sequence against the chosen
meter's repeating template and score the fraction of
syllables that land on the expected beat.
The five presets: iambic (da-DUM, the heartbeat of Shakespeare's sonnets and blank verse), trochaic (DUM-da, e.g. "Tell me not, in mournful numbers"), anapestic (da-da-DUM, a galloping triple beat), dactylic (DUM-da-da, the meter of classical epic), and haiku, which drops stress entirely and instead checks a strict 5-7-5 syllable count across three lines.
The 3D rhythm line renders one bead per syllable; stressed beads sit taller and glow brighter. Pressing "Read rhythm" sweeps a cursor light across the beads at the chosen tempo, the way a metronome marks a poem's beat.
Note: this is a simplified stress model (no pronunciation dictionary), so it will occasionally mis-stress an irregular word — real scansion by ear can differ, which is itself part of what makes meter fun to argue about.