Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to compare poetic rhythm and prose rhythm in English. For this study 28 readings of 11 poems and 14 readings of 11 stories were used. The important findings are as follows: 1. Stress occurred more regularly in the poetry readings than in the prose readings. However, the difference between the two was not as great as had been expected. 2. The findings regarding tone groups were that usually a six-syllable line was very likely to form one complete tone group, but if a line consisted of more than six syllables, it usually favoured more than a single tone group. 3. The number of syllables in a tone group was two to eight in most cases in the poetry readings, with the maximum being 16; while in the prose readings the number of syllables was more widely distributed, sometimes extending to a maximum of 22. 4. Poems were read more slowly than stories; to be more exact, the number of syllables read per second in the poetry readings was less than that in the story readings by one syllable.
