The Decline of Classical Poetry

English students in the early and mid-1500s were required to learn that classical rhythm when they studied the poetry of Greece and Rome. It was busier and more complicated, in part because Latin and Greek words tended to be longer multi-syllable words made up of those long and short syllables. When English poets tried to translate those works into English, they found it to be almost impossible to make English words fit that specific rhythm. For all of those reasons, English poetry experienced a decline from the mid-1400s through the mid- 1500s.