Ralph's example from Dickinson is perfect. You can also find issues of line length in that wee piece of mine on Tennyson that Tim posted, and line length is so important in a number of George Herbert poems, and of course in Arnold's "Dover Beach." But the question you repeated is the one I'm not sure I have a generalized answer for--how does one choose one's line lengths? One can talk for a long time about how the hexameters ending a Spenserian stanza slow and aggrandize the pace of the thing, how Skelton's short lines seem especially suited to lightness but aren't always entirely light, how hudibrastics were the choice for Auden's "New Year Letter" rather than heroic couplets. Auden argued that Pope's heroic couplets were too inclined to closure, less inclined to enjambment than shorter lines would be, so he thought hudibrastics better suited to sustaining an argument rather than writing aphorisms. I see his point, but think Pope was pretty good at sustaining arguments too.
In truth, I don't think you can always know what line length to try, especially if you aren't working in a fixed stanza pattern. You can only try some drafts in a given length, then ask yourself if you've found the right dimension for the thing. Shorter lines often work for comedy, longer lines for statliness, but we can all think of exceptions to this. While sometimes such radical changes ruin a revision rather than helping it, the exercise of simply trying out a different line length for a poem can often pay dividends.
I'm fond of Dickinson's way of starting with a set pattern, but allowing thought and emotion to carry her into variations in rhyme or line, as Ralph points out. I'm trying a bit of that myself these days, in my own odd way. But you've expressed uncertainty about writing in meter in earlier notes, and it might be wise to try writing stanzas with a fixed line length for a while, or fixed pattern of lengths, as a way of training yourself to be more aware of measures. Don't despair. Hopkins looked at poems by the young Yeats and said he had no ear for meter. It's not always something that comes naturally, and takes a lot of practice. One of the remarkable things about Yeats as a poet is how he drilled himself, willed himself to be a poet through hard, hard work over decades. He's a good model in that respect.
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