 Following a Latin model, the "Poema" employs a septenary line, "a seven-foot line usually in trochaic rhythm"; according to R.D.Fulk and others this is possibly the first example of that line in English.According to Joseph Malof, this Latin-derived meter in subsequent instances is transformed into the looser seven-stress line (proving the dominance in English of stress over syllable) that became the English common metre, the standard line used in ballads.