Abstract
This study concerns the constraints of English Poetic Meter. In English poems, the metrical pattern doesn't always match the linguistic stress on the lines. These mismatches are found differently among the poets. For the lexical stress mismatched with the weak metrical position, $*W{\Rightarrow}{\;}Strength$ is established by the concept of the strong syllable. The peaks of monosyllabic words mismatched with the weak metrical position are divided according to which side of the boundary of a phonological domain they are adjacent to. Adjacency Constraint I is suggested for the mismatched peak which is adjacent to the left boundary of a phonological domain; *Peak] and Adjacency ConstraintII for the mismatched peak which are adjacent to the right boundary of a phonological domain. These constraints are various according to the poets(Pope, Milton and Shakespeare) : *[Peak [-stress], $W{\Rightarrow}{\;}*Strength$ and *Peak] in Pope; *[+stress][Peak [-stress] and *Peak] in Milton ; *[+stress][Peak [-stress], $W{\;}{\Rightarrow}{\;}*Strength$ and ACII in Shakespeare.