Help me please with this poem
Three rings for the elven kings under the sky,
Seven - for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone,
Nine - for mortal men, doomed to die,
One - for the Dark Lord on his dark throne,
In the land of Mordor, where the shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the land of Mordor where the shadows lie.
What's the metre of this verse?
Thank you very much in advance!

Question

Answer

P.S. Isn't it supposed to be a translation from the Elvish? I wonder if the Elvish has a more regular meter to it. I wonder whether Tolkien is actually trying to get the effect of a _translation_ in which an (imaginary) translator took liberties with the meter in order to preserve the meaning.

Answer

It certainly isn't any regular "jingly" meter. I think I hear four accented syllable in every line.

Since Tolkien was a middle-English scholar and an expert on "Beowulf," I'm guessing that it might have more to do with the verse forms described here--

https://www.wmich.edu/medieval/resources/IOE/pometer.html

--then with one of the more regular forms that get names like "iambic pentameter."

It sounds just a little bit like the meter of Browning's "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix:"

"I spring to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;	
I gallop’d, Dirck gallop’d, we gallop’d all three;" which is--which is--oh, never mind, I just Googled and that one is complicated, too.