How did Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and W.H. Auden revive strong-stress metre?

In the context of 20th-century literature, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and W.H. Auden revived strong-stress metre—often referred to as "native" metre—as part of a broader movement to experiment with traditional forms and prose cadences.12

Unlike syllable-stress metres, which became the norm during the English Renaissance, strong-stress verse is measured solely by the count of stresses, allowing the number of unstressed syllables to vary significantly. This rhythmic structure is indigenous to Germanic languages and was the standard for Old English poetry, such as the epic Beowulf.12

These Modernist poets demonstrated the vitality of this ancient form through their own works. Specifically, the versification found in Pound’s Cantos and Eliot’s Four Quartets (1943) serves as a primary example of this revival. By incorporating these older, stress-based rhythms, these poets moved beyond the constraints of the iambic pentameter that had dominated English verse for centuries.12