![]() They are never used as the sole meter of a poem if they were, it would be like the steady impact of nails being hammered into a board-no pleasure to hear or dance to. Spondee and pyrrhic are called feet, even though they contain only one kind of stressed syllable. In the twentieth century, the bouncing meters-anapestic and dactylic-have been used more often for comic verse than for serious poetry. Iambic and anapestic meters are called rising meters because their movement rises from unstressed syllable to stressed trochaic and dactylic meters are called falling. Thus, when we describe the rhythm of a poem, we âscanâ the poem and mark the stresses (/) and absences of stress (^) and count the number of feet. Scansion: Describing the rhythms of poetry by dividing the lines into feet, marking the locations of stressed and unstressed syllables, and counting the syllables. Rhythm: the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line. This is the | forest pri | meval, the | murmuring | pine and the | hemlocks.And the sound | of a voice | that is stillĭactylic hexameter (6 dactyls, 17 syllables a trochee replaces the last dactyl).Trochaic tetrameter (4 trochees, 8 syllables)Īnapestic trimeter (3 anapests, 9 syllables) ![]() That time | of year | thou mayst | in me | be hold.Iambic pentameter (5 iambs, 10 syllables) Here are some more serious examples of the various meters. A good example of trochaic monometer, for example, is this poem entitled "Fleas": The number of syllables in a line varies therefore according to the meter. A line of one foot is a monometer, 2 feet is a dimeter, and so on-trimeter (3), tetrameter (4), pentameter (5), hexameter (6), heptameter (7), and octameter (8). DACTYLIC (/ x x): This is the forest pri meval, the murmuring pines and the hemlock (a trochee replaces the final dactyl)Įach line of a poem contains a certain number of feet of iambs, trochees, spondees, dactyls or anapests.ANAPESTIC (x x /): And the sound of a voice that is still.SPONDAIC (/ /): Break, break, break/ On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!. ![]()
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