Question

What is the dominant meter of the following lines from John Milton's "Paradise Lost"?

"Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man"
dactylic
iambic
trochaic
anapestic

Answer 1

The correct answer is 'iambic', because it is characterized by the sequence of unstressed and stressed syllables (unaccented and accented), and there are 10 syllables in each line.