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.