Excerpt from sonnet 116
william shakespeare

let me not to the marriage of true minds
admit impediments; love is not love
which alters when it alteration finds,
or bends with the remover to remove:
o, no, it is an ever-fixed mark, 5
that looks on tempests and is never shaken;
it is the star to every wand’ring bark,
whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
within his bending sickle’s compass come; 10
love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
but bears it out even to the edge of doom.
it this be error and upon me proved,
i never writ, nor no man ever loved.

which best explains why this poem's rhythmical pattern is identified as iambic pentameter?

a. each line is a line of verse with ten metrical feet, each consisting of one short (or unstressed) syllable followed by one long (or stressed) syllable.

b. each line is a line of verse with ten metrical feet, each consisting of one long (or stressed) syllable followed by one short (or unstressed) syllable.

c. each line is a line of verse with five metrical feet, each consisting of one short (or unstressed) syllable followed by one long (or stressed) syllable.

d. each line is a line of verse with five metrical feet, each consisting of one long (or stressed) syllable followed by one short (or unstressed) syllable.