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Meters
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Examples of Iambic Trimeter
When you combine three iambs, you create poetry in iambic trimeter. Each
line has six syllables that alternate stressed and unstressed accents. Here
are some examples:
The only news I know
Is bulletins all day
From Immortality.
The only shows I see,
Tomorrow and Today,
Perchance Eternity.
- Emily Dickinson, "The Only News I Know"
“Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run…
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And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.”
Trochees in Shakespeare's Macbeth
Though Shakespeare typically writes in iambic pentameter, he used trochaic
meter to give an eerie and ominous feeling to the the spells he wrote for the
witches in Macbeth.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
Scale of dragon; tooth of wolf;
Witches' mummy; maw and gulf...
The backward stress pattern of trochees is effective not only for making the
words of witches sound even more unearthly, but for giving them the kind of
incantatory rhythm that is used in so many magic words,
like Hocus pocus and Open Sesame.
Earth, receive an honoured guest;
William Yeats is laid to rest:
Let this Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.
Notice again how the unstressed syllable is dropped from the end of each
line to enable rhyming. Generally speaking, it is much more common to end
lines, as well as poems, on stressed syllables because it creates a pause that
gives a sense of completion.
In this passage from Shakespeare's King Lear, King Lear's daughter has just
been killed before his very eyes. Although the play is written, like most of
Shakespeare's plays, in iambic pentameter, Shakespeare substitutes
trochees for all five iambs in the final line to demarcate a heightening of
emotion and to create the tone of a wail.
And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life!
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,
and thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more,
never, never, never, never, never!
Example #1
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!”
Example #2
“Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
Scale of dragon; tooth of wolf;
Witches’ mummy; maw and gulf…”
This extract has taken from one of the famous plays of William Shakespeare,
Macbeth. The witches sing this song as they intend to curse Macbeth. Though
most of Shakespeare’s works are written in iambic pentameter, where he has
used a trochaic meter to give a strange feeling to the charm, he presents for
the witches in this play. This backward stress pattern of the trochaic meter is
highly effective to create the blank rhythm widely used in magic words.
The poet has expressed his profound sadness over his friend’s death. He has
skillfully inserted trochaic trimeter in the poem to express his feelings. It is due
to the melancholy tone created by the downward emphasis of the trochee that
the poet has expressed his grief. However, the unstressed syllable at the end
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of each line is dropped to create end rhyme in the poem. Also, the dropping of
a syllable has created a pause that completes the line in itself.
Example #4
Sorrow like a ceaseless rain
Beats upon my heart.
People twist and scream in pain, —
Dawn will find them still again;
This has neither wax nor wane,
Neither stop nor start.”
The poem deals with the subject of sorrow. The poet has presented his
version of sorrow in contrastwith others. However, the poet has used trochaic
diameter, emphasizing the conspicuous downward beat of the poet’s
pensive mood. He has also used catalexis technique to make the rhyme
schemepossible. In other words, he has deliberately omitted the last
unstressed syllable of each line.
Example #5
“Should you ask me, whence these stories?
Whence these legends and traditions,
With the odors of the forest,
With the dew and damp of meadows,
With the curling smoke of wigwams,
With the rushing of great rivers,
With their frequent repetitions,
And their wild reverberations,
As of thunder in the mountains?”
Anapest
In poetry, a metrical pattern that has two unstressed syllables followed by a
stressed syllable is called an anapest.
An anapest is punctuated as follows: UU/
Examples of Anapest:
U U / U U /
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In the blink of an eye
U U / U U / U U / U U /
Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house.
U U / U U / U U / U U /
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
U U / U U / U U / U U /
O Rose thou art sick / the invisible worm / that flies in the night
U U / U U / U U /
I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky.
U U / U U / U U /
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking.
Byron has written this poem in anapestic tetrameter pattern, which consists of
four anapests in each line. In this extract, anapests are marked in bold. The
entire poem has the same pattern, where the first two syllables are
unstressed, followed by a third stressed syllable.
I am out of humanity’s reach,
I must finish my journey alone,
Never hear the sweet music of speech…
They are so unacquaintted with man,
Their tameness is shocking to me…”
This poem is a perfect example of anapest, which runs throughout the poem.
Most of the lines are following anapestic tetrameter. Like in the first line, there
are four anapests. However, three anapests are also used in other lines.
This poem is also a very good example of anapest. Each long line has three
anapests (anapestic trimeter) followed by shorter lines with two anapests
(anapestic dimeter). It is lending rhythm and regular beats to the poem.
In this poem, Tennyson has used dactylic meter perfectly. Notice this dactylic
pattern as one accented syllable, followed by two unaccented syllables.
Dactylic syllables give rhythm and pause while reading, thus laying emphasis
on certain words.
Browning has used dactylic meter to create a great rhythmic effect. Most of
the lines of the above verses contain four dactyls.
“Out of the cradle, endlessly rocking
Out of the mockingbird’s throat, the musical shuttle
Out of the Ninth-month midnight …”
“Higgledy piggledy,
Bacon, lord Chancellor.
Negligent, fell for the
Paltrier vice.
Bribery toppled him,
Bronchopneumonia
Finished him, testing some
Poultry on ice.”