The metre is denoted by the syllable count of each line, i.e. 8.6.8.6, 86.86, or 86 86, depending on style, or by its shorthand abbreviation "CM".
Common metre has been used for ballads such as "Tam Lin", hymns such as "Amazing Grace", and Christmas carols such as "O Little Town of Bethlehem".
He does not rise in piteous haste To put on convict-clothes, While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats, and notes Each new and nerve-twitched pose, Fingering a watch whose little ticks Are like horrible hammer-blows.
[4] The fourteener gives the poet greater flexibility than common metre, in that its long lines invite the use of variably placed caesuras and spondees to achieve metrical variety, in place of a fixed pattern of iambs and line breaks.
[citation needed] Whose sense in so evil consort, their stepdame Nature lays, That ravishing delight in them most sweet tunes do not raise; Or if they do delight therein, yet are so cloyed with wit, As with sententious lips to set a title vain on it: O let them hear these sacred tunes, and learn in wonder’s schools, To be (in things past bounds of wit) fools, if they be not fools.
Likewise related is the common particular metre, 8.8.6.8.8.6., as in the tune Magdalen College, composed in 1774 by William Hayes, which has been used with the hymn "We Sing of God, the Mighty Source", by Christopher Smart.
A slumber did my spirit seal; I had no human fears: She seemed a thing that could not feel The touch of earthly years.
Another American poem in ballad metre is Ernest Thayer's "Casey at the Bat": The outlook wasn't brilliant for The Mudville Nine that day; The score stood four to two, with but One inning more to play.
The stretching arms, the yawning breath, which I to bedward use, Are patterns of the pangs of death, when life will me refuse: And of my bed each sundry part in shadows doth resemble, The sundry shapes of death, whose dart shall make my flesh to tremble.
O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain!