As previously discussed, sonnets are traditionally written in a consistent meter, most frequently iambic pentameter. But as any reader of poetry might notice, this is hardly the whole story concerning meter in sonnets. The expectation of regular meter can be exploited by the poet for substantial effect, both by altering the rhythm within a line and by inserting lines written in an unexpected meter into an otherwise regular poem.
The first category divides more specifically into two broad categories: the transposition of single feet within a line and the addition or removal of a single syllable from the line. We may find examples of both in William Wordsworth's sonnet Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1803:
Earth has not anything to show more fair
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This city now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning: silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theaters, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendor valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
The first foot of the first line can be scanned iambically - Earth has - but seems most naturally to fall into a trochee - Earth has. So too the second line's "Dull would he be" can scan either iambically or with an initial trochee, depending on the choice of emphasis. But in the sixth line the reader has no choice: it cannot be a pure line of iambic pentameter if the words are not to be strained to their breaking point. "Ships, towers, domes" can be purely iambic or begin with a spondee - to me the latter seems more natural - but "theaters" absolute refuses to have its emphasis on the middle syllable as required by the iambic rhythm. It must have its emphasis on the first syllable - "theatres." And so the iambic rhythm breaks for a moment.
Equally important, we must realize that the line has, in fact, eleven syllables. There is an important stylistic note relating to iambic pentameter that should be mentioned here: a line of otherwise perfect iambic pentameter that ends with an extra unstressed syllable is called a "feminine ending," and is a perfectly usual poetic technique to avoid straining a word that ends with an unstressed syllable (like, say, "ending"). But Wordsworth's line does not have its extra syllable at the end in an unstressed position; the last four syllables of the line must naturally be "and temples lie," with the stress at the end where it would be expected at the end of the line. The extra syllable comes rather in the middle of the line, just after the moment we have just looked at where "theatres" bucks the rhythm. The last syllable of "theatres" is extraneous - it is not emphasized, and an attempt to use it as the first syllable of an iamb with the "and" throws the last three syllables ("temples lie") into a confusion of having too many stresses in too little space (a foot cannot have more than one stressed syllable, nor can a stressed syllable alone make up a foot). Rather, we must take "theatres" as the dactyl it is, and recognize a dactylic substitution into this otherwise iambic line (and poem). Such a substitution plays on the expectation of iambic rhythm established by the rest of the poem, and by the sonnet form in general, to draw attention to the line in which it appears and the word(s) it includes. In this case, at a basic level at least, inserting a dactyl into the line listing everything that lies silent, bare, and open emphasizes two things: first the sheer number of things lying so (so many that it overflows out of the verse!) and second that even the theaters, places of crowds and noise, are silent and bare. The bucking of the meter is an effective tool for drawing attention to such moments in the text.
A similar, if more limited, effect is also brought about by the trochaic substitution at the start of the ninth line, where"Never" cannot be forced into an iambic rhythm and must be instead a trochee. It draws attention to the word, and thereby to the uniqueness of the moment experienced by the poet. This effect is less pronounced, not only because trochaic substitutions (particularly at the beginning of lines) are more common than dactylic, but also because the shift in stress is not accompanied by the introduction of an additional extraneous syllable.
The effect of these substitutions need not be simply to draw attention to the word in question, nor do I mean to imply that this must be the only effect; there are rhythmic reasons, such as echoing a hiccup in the world of the poem with a halting in its verse, and also other stylistic reasons, such as a distaste for overprecise regularity, for substituting irregular feet into a line of iambic pentameter (or indeed into any regular line). The simple analysis presented here is intended merely to introduce the idea that irregularity within regular verse can be a significant tool in the composition of the sonnet.
As mentioned above, there are also more extreme changes of verse form that can occur within a sonnet, although they are much less common. An example of such a change (accompanied by many of the irregularities discussed above as well) can be found in Caroline Norton's sonnet "Like an enfranchised bird who wildly springs" (titled, as many poems are, after its first line):
Like an enfranchised bird who wildly springs,
With a keen sparkle in his glancing eye
And a strong effort in his quivering wings,
Up to the blue vault of the happy sky,-
So my enamored heart, so long thy own,
At length from Love's imprisonment set free,
Goes forth into the open world alone,
Glad and exulting in its liberty:
But like that helpless bird, (confined so long,
His weary wings have lost all power to soar,)
Who soon forgets to trill his joyous song,
And, feebly fluttering, sinks to earth once more,-
So, from its former bonds released in vain,
My heart still feels the weight of that remembered chain.
Passing over the many metrical irregularities in what can still be identified as iambic pentameter in the first thirteen lines (which do marvelous work assisting in the conjuring of the image of the bird struggling to fly), I would draw attention to the last line, which has twelve iambic syllables: iambic hexameter, or an Alexandrine line. Given its regularity, this is not a case of simply inserting an extra couple of syllables into a line of pentameter; it is a deliberate choice to change meter. And it has its effect, not least by adding metrical weight to the "weight of that remembered chain." This sort of extreme metrical change is, as mentioned above, unusual, but it is not out of the question. What maintains this poem's position within the metrical tradition of the sonnet is that the alterations rely on the assumption of regularity that the sonnet provides; only against the backdrop of a form that is usually and traditionally regular do the irregularities have significance; or at least their significance is heightened by that backdrop. The sonnet does not have to be completely regular; but a poem must interact with the implied regularity of the form or else it starts to leave the realm of the sonnet and become simply another form of fourteen line poem.
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