The poem is comprised of eighteen stanzas of six lines each, and most frequently employs a meter known as trochaic octameter, which refers to a line containing eight trochees-pairs of stressed and unstressed syllables. The first five lines of each stanza are all in trochaic octameter, with the final unstressed syllable missing in lines two, four, and five of each stanza. The sixth line of each stanza consists of three trochees and an extra final stressed syllable. An example of the fifth and sixth lines from the last stanza shows this pattern:
And my / soul from / out that / shadow / that lies /
floating / on the / floor
Shall be / lifted- / never / more!
Poe achieves variety in this rhythm by adding pauses, and he keeps the sound from becoming monotonous by making much use of consonance and assonance, or repetition of consonant and vowel sounds, respectively. In addition, Poe's use of a regular rhyme scheme in which every stanza uses words that rhyme with "more" to conclude the second, fourth, fifth and sixth lines creates a very strong unifying effect for the poem. In his "The Philosophy of Composition, "Poe states that he consciously chose the or sound because of its "sonorous" quality. He also uses internal rhyme in lines one and three, rhyming the fourth and last trochees of the lines, and repeating the rhyme of the third line in the fourth trochee of line four. Thus the final word of every line has either an end rhyme or an internal rhyme.