01553--alliterative metre

Alliterative metre is the distinctive verse form of Old Germanic poetry, including Old English. It employed a long line divided by a  caesura into two balanced half-lines, each with a given number of stressed syllables (usually two) and a variable number of unstressed syllables. These halflines are linked by alliteration between both (sometimes one) of the stressed syllables in the first half and the first (and sometimes the second) stressed syllable in the second half.