The meter of tradition al Chinese verse is usually based on the phrasing of the syllabic foot, which is seldom related to the connection between syntax and stress. In addition, unlike jue-lu, gu-shi is not subsumed under the restrictions of ping-ze tone template, In fact, many lines of Jue-lu violate the ping-ze rules as well. At this point, whether a line qualifies to be a verse is not solely determined by tone or footing, but there should ex is t other abs tract principles. Observing from a corpus of gu-shi, this paper considers that the key to the metrics is the correlation between grammatical stress and metrical stress; a syntactic non-head constituent receives stress, and the stress maximum may not corresponds to a weak metrical position. Under the framework of Optimality Theory, this paper posits a pair of alignment constraints to account for the verse lines; Align-S serves to select a masculine line, whereas Align-W serves to select a feminine line, The positing of a floating constraint then correctly predicts the metrical pattern s of gu-shi.