Long Metre, abbreviated L.M. or LM, is a poetic metre consisting of four line stanzas, or quatrains, in iambic tetrameter with alternate rhyme pattern a-b-a-b. It is similar to Common Metre, which consists of four lines in alternating iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter.
Poets have utilized Long Metre for over a millenium: the hymn Te lucis ante terminum is known from a hymnary of the eighth or early ninth century, and might be even older than that hymnary. The same meter is also found in more recent works: Psalm 100, All People That on Earth Do Dwell, is sometimes sung to an arrangement of the calypso tune used in Jamaica Farewell, and the song, Hernando's Hideaway,[1] from The Pajama Game, is also largely in Long Metre.